


The Turning World

by skyvoice



Category: Naruto
Genre: 700-compliant, Multi, Sasuke on the nature of lives and stories, Sasuke-centric, Subtext, Team 7 OT3, and it's bad but maybe it's not all bad, but it got away from me, eta: really this started just to answer the question of 'so about what happened to the uchiha', fighting dreamers grow up, mostly Sarada though, sorry Uzumaki children, written to cope with 699/700 inasmuch as they can be coped with, yes the kids are in here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-27 22:49:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2709557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyvoice/pseuds/skyvoice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I don't care if the Hokage is having a tea ceremony with the Daimyo," Sasuke growls, a fistful of the terrified ANBU’s flak vest in his right hand and the beginnings of lightning chakra sparking around his left. "You will open this door, or I won't just unmask you, I'll take your head with it."</p><p>Starring Sasuke and his temper in a tale of not-so-thrilling kidnapping; or, getting old and the consequences thereof. Team 7 OT3 if squinting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Turning World

**Author's Note:**

> Characters I wanted to include but didn't find space for: Juugo, Sai, more of Kakashi. Sorry fellas, Hinata took more stage than I expected in a Team 7 fic.

"I don't care if the Hokage is having a tea ceremony with the Daimyo," Sasuke growls, a fistful of the terrified ANBU’s flak vest in his right hand and the beginnings of lightning chakra sparking around his left. "You will open this door, or I won't just unmask you, I'll take your head with it."

"H-Hokage-sama said h-he wasn't to be —" The man tries, and Sakura steps forward to put a hand on Sasuke's arm, voice deceptively calm.

"Let me handle this, Sasuke," she says, and turns a smile on the ANBU that makes the man relax. Sasuke lets him go because he's known her too long at this point not to know better. "You can tell Naruto he has two choices: let us in, or watch me crumble this tower to pebbles. Either way he'll have to talk to us."

Sasuke's Sharingan is whirling, instinctive with the rage in his veins, and he can see the ANBU's chakra wilt visibly away from Sakura. If he had the presence of mind to think it, he'd recommend that Naruto get a guard less likely to crack under pressure, but all he can think now is that he's reasonably certain he can remove Naruto in time if they break down the door and trip the trap explosive seals placed for such a purpose.

"If I have to ask you one more time," he starts, and then finally the door opens, revealing Aburame Shino, flanked by Konoha's glaring kage. 

Sasuke hasn't felt bloodlust like this in years. It's almost relaxing. He shoves the ANBU guard aside, reaches for Shino's collar, and in the next second he's through the door and Aburame is getting shoved out. 

Naruto should never have been allowed to master the shunshin.

"I'm going to kill him," Sasuke says calmly even as Sakura shuts the door behind her. "And then I'm going to kill you. Do you even know what kind of a message I got? It was the middle of the night in Rice Fields and I get a hawk saying my daughter was _misplaced_ —"

"The phrasing wasn't great, okay," Naruto starts, and Sasuke cuts him off with a vicious: 

"How do you _misplace_ a child? Is this the kind of Academy you let them run now -- worthless field trips to a region I've told you isn't stable with so little protection that you can _misplace_ one?" He seethes, shaking off the calming hand Sakura tries to lay on him again. Now that they're not united against the guard he can sense that there's going to be a difference in opinion here, but in light of the fact that Sarada is missing, he thinks he can have some damn leeway in his temper. "Or were you just _hoping_ that you'd be able to misplace her one of these days — convenient, wouldn't it —"

"You're crossing a line," Naruto snaps, angry now as well. "You know damn well I wouldn't let anyone in this village get hurt if I could help it!"

"You have a funny way of presenting evidence," Sasuke sneers, and he can hear Sakura's patience snap as she storms between the two of them and shoves them apart, hard enough that they both have to release a burst of chakra to the feet to stay upright.

"This is stupid," she snarls, but the deadly glare she aims at them lands on Sasuke first. "We don't have time to stand here arguing because we damn well don't have time to waste before starting a search! Naruto, what are you doing already?"

"Hell with Konoha," Sasuke says, disgusted. "You were the ones who lost my daughter, do you think I'd trust you to find her again?"

"You don't have other options right now, Sasuke," Sakura says, looking like she'd like to punch him but doesn't want to end up breaking the walls and having the conversation listened to. "If you go haring off to 'find your own way' in the middle of this, I'll —"

" _Listen_ to me for a second, both of you!" Naruto slams a hand down on his desk, sudden enough that both Sasuke and Sakura twitch for a weapon before glaring at him. "There are already three crack ANBU teams scouting the area where the trip was, and the place she was last seen, and Kakashi-sensei has already sent Pakkun and the pack out as well. He'll be here to report in a few minutes, so if everyone will _calm down_ so we can discuss a better strategy, that would be fucking _great_."

"You have three crack teams out and you still don't have a clue where she was taken other than _'where the trip was'_?" Sasuke's incredulous, and he can feel the throb in his left arm that means Naruto is probably suppressing an immense amount of pissed-off chakra right now. He doesn't care. "Have you even tried checking with Grass —"

"You know our relationship with Grass is tense right now, alright," Naruto snaps, striding behind his desk as if trying to retreat into his authority. He's only half a year into his Hokageship and Sasuke's not sure that some of his hair isn't starting to grey, a funny sudden pang at how much time has gone between them cutting into the cold fury for just a second. 

"And I told you to get it sorted out," he says instead of acknowledging it, and Sakura releases a sigh of frustration that makes him turn to frown at her. "Grass has been unstable for a year, now, and with the drought this season —"

"Sasuke, I'm trying to be patient with you for Sarada's sake, but if you can't stop fixating on blaming Naruto instead of giving a damn about your daughter, I'm going to kick you out of this room," she says, and Sasuke's shoulders stiffen.

"You know I came back as soon as I could," he says, and there was a time when that might have softened her, but there's no pity in her gaze now. "You think I don't —"

"GRASS," Naruto says, very loudly, over the two of them. Once, very early in the tentative uncertainty of their relationship, he'd thought it was funny when Sakura snapped at Sasuke, but the amusement he's had for it seems to have dwindled over the years. "Has refused to acknowledge the request Kakashi-sensei sent them last year to open trade routes and stop accepting missions from the rival shogunate causing trouble in the northwest, which is why we haven't been able to open talks with them."

"They take those missions because they can't feed themselves, you imbecile," Sasuke growls, and Sakura slaps a hand to her face like she's about to lose the last shred of sanity she has, but he continues: "Do you even read what I send you —"

"Naruto is right, Sasuke," Kakashi interrupts from where he's flickered into the room. They'd all sensed him a few seconds earlier, hovering at the window to break in, but it's been a while since any of Team 7 had the patience to really be entertained by Kakashi's unbreakable habits. "Grass has demonstrated unwillingness to work with us."

"Naruto is wrong," Sakura shoots at Kakashi, startling Sasuke into staring at her openly. "I've been dealing with requests for emergency supplies from the border with Grass for months now. The country is dealing with a famine, for god's sake, and the civilians aren't all aligned with the shinobi there."

"Sakura, it's always sad when," Kakashi starts, and Sakura points at the scroll on Naruto's desk with such poisonous ferocity that it actually shuts him up.

"You know what's sad? It's sad when none of you can stand in a room with each other without getting into a stupid pissing match when _there is a child missing_." She's all rigid anger down the line of her spine, and Sasuke takes a habitual step to cover her nondominant left side before he even thinks about it. It's not combat. It feels like combat.

Everything feels like combat these days. 

"Sakura-chan is right," Naruto, who has never outgrown the names he gave his teammates when they were twelve, picks up the scroll and unrolls it over the desk, pinning down the curling end of it with a paperweight that looks like it was crafted of sand, pale golden grains graduating upward into clear glass. When news of Naruto's inauguration had reached Sasuke, he'd been in the distant reaches of Snow Country, and he'd sent a cheap snow-globe paperweight, nothing more than fake snow suspended over an ice bridge. He'd included a card from the tourist-trap shop as well: 'About time you stopped being dead weight'.

The mail gets lost easily between that part of Snow and pretty much anywhere else, so he assumes Naruto never got it, or Sakura intercepted it and replaced it with whatever appropriate gift she gave as from both of them. Either way, he's never seen Naruto use it.

"Shino said the trip took them a few hours' travel from the border checkpoint," Kakashi says, pointing at a spot along the line demarcating the end of Fire Country. That part of the border is loosely patrolled, and Sasuke's jaw clenches at the stupidity again before he forces himself to exhale and reach across the desk as well, tapping a spot just north of the checkpoint.

"That's the last place I know that the Grass-nin enclave has been headquartered," he says. "That news is a month old, but they'd only just moved then."

"That's as good a bet as any if they've taken her into Grass Country," Naruto says, frowning. "Kidnapping a Konoha-nin like this is as good as a declaration of war, though — why would Grass want to get involved in something like that now, if they're as desperate as you say they are? We'd crush them if it came down to it."

Sasuke forgets sometimes that Naruto can grasp concepts faster than he lets on, and he forgets that over the years Naruto has learned to say things like _'We'd crush them'_. When he glances at Sakura, he doesn't expect her to be looking back at him. 

"What do you think?" She asks him. "You were there more recently than any of us."

"They're not an organized shinobi village anymore," Sasuke says, sliding his index finger along the entire length of the border. Naruto's gaze tracks the movement. "The peace between villages meant that it was cheaper for Grass's daimyo government to contract shinobi work out to bigger villages. They're not much more than mercenaries."

"We still keep guards in that area, don't we?" Sakura's frowning at Naruto now. It's been a while since she's left Konoha for much, the village's ninja hospital busy trying to integrate a referral system with the glossy civilian hospital network that has sprung up along with the other civilian structures atop the Hokage monument. Konoha looks less like Konoha every time Sasuke comes back. "What was Shino thinking, taking students somewhere foreign shinobi could sneak in and back out without being caught?"

"Shino-kun didn't," a new voice breaks in suddenly, and all of their heads rise in surprise to see Hinata's figure outlined in the side door that adjoins the Hokage's suites. Sasuke hasn't actually seen her in — years, probably, but he's startled to see that she looks more the same than any of them. There's a small hand clutching the side of her dress but no other indication that she's not alone; whichever Uzumaki child it is has thoroughly hidden themselves behind her.

"What do you mean?" Naruto sounds tense, and Sasuke glances again at Sakura's face, a better barometre for whatever the hell is going on in Konoha these days than anyone else. She's wearing an expression as she watches Naruto that hovers between concern and — he's not sure what. There's a tenderness there that he looks away from after a second.

"Bolt?" Hinata says, gently untwisting his hand from her dress. The boy reluctantly steps out from around her, looking sullen and guilty. "Why don't you tell them what you told me?"

"Bolt," Naruto sighs, rubbing at the side of his face and looking exhausted. There's an eloquence in his tone that speaks to long-standing frustration, something Sasuke has to wonder about. Sasuke has only seen Naruto's eldest a few times since Sarada started at the Academy; once at the Academy orientation ceremony, watching from a distance, and once when he'd returned to the village during Naruto's first five-kage summit and seen a small blond boy angrily scrubbing graffiti off the Fourth's face on the mountain.

It had unmoored him for just a breath, but then his vision had resolved the corrected details and he'd remembered what year it was, his own age, the time passing.

"It wasn't my fault!" Bolt explodes, small fists rising. "How was _I_ supposed to know that weirdo Sarada was gonna follow me —"

" _Bolt_ ," Naruto booms, giving Sasuke and Sakura a significant look that brings an embarrassed blush to the boy's face. Sakura looks like her patience is worn about as thin as Naruto's sounds, but Sasuke is —

It's not like he didn't know, from Sakura's letters and Sarada's shrinking addendums, that she maybe wasn't as popular in school as any of them might have liked. It's ... it's still not a comfortable reality to face in the moment.

"Sorry," Bolt mutters, not insincerely, but his fists stay clenched. "But it wasn't my fault."

"Bolt, you deliberately left the group when Aburame-sensei told you not to," Hinata says, gentle and steely all at once. Sasuke thinks she might be a good mother, but his memories of his own mother are blurry and it's hard to tell whether he's remembering what he wants to or what he actually knew. 

"Yeah, but the trip was _boring_ ," Bolt says, staring up at his mother in appeal. He's all sunshine and pale sky and looking a little like his lower lip might start wobbling under the stress of a roomful of high-powered shinobi all staring demandingly at him, and Sasuke would have turned him over to Sakura to handle in a heartbeat. Hinata is made of stronger stuff, apparently, and simply gazes back at him, expectant. After a moment he slumps and slouches over to the desk, bracing his hands on the edge to give himself the leverage to stand on tiptoe and point at a spot far closer to the border than Sasuke is at all happy with.

"You bypassed the checkpoint's patrol radius?" Naruto sounds furious. "You mean — you snuck out on your own?! How many _times_ have I told you that you need to behave, _especially_ when you're outside the village?"

"It wasn't on my own," Bolt shoots back, dropping back to his feet and glaring into Naruto's eyes for the first time so far. "It's not like I don't know that you have that ANBU guy tail me on trips, so I knew I was going to be _fine_."

The pieces fall into place in an instant. Sasuke's almost confused by the total lack of emotion he's feeling until Sakura's eyes startle over to him in surprise and her voice says —

"Sasuke!" There's a hand on his arm and he finds it being moved from the hilt of his sword. Kakashi has straightened from his louche slouch, Hinata's stance shifted from scolding to battle-ready in an instant. 

"You're saying," Sasuke says, letting Sakura keep a grip on his elbow and looking at Naruto instead of his son. "That you had an ANBU guard set to keep your son safe, who was either too incompetent to notice another student had followed him or _didn't care_ about Sarada —"

"Don't make this about Bolt," Naruto hisses, but neither of them break off their staring contest even when Bolt obviously shrinks away from his father.

"I'm not making this about him," Sasuke growls, finally shaking Sakura off. "I'm making this about _you_ —"

"And I'm going to make this into a one-woman search if you don't _shut up_ ," Sakura interjects, taking Bolt's shoulders and leading him back to Hinata. He doesn't quite duck behind her again when he gets there, but he definitely keeps himself firmly within the protective reach of her arms.

"Sakura-chan," Naruto starts, but she shoots him a look that is cold fury.

"We'll talk about what Sasuke said later," she says. "Because I also want to know. But right now, Bolt's given us a better location to start from than we had — thank you, Bolt," she adds as an aside, though Bolt doesn't look particularly reassured. "Let's _do_ something."

Sasuke closes his eyes and counts to ten before exhaling and turning his back on Naruto, squaring his shoulders to Sakura only. 

"I contacted Karin as soon as I heard," he says, waiting for the inevitable — and there it is, the minute widening of her eyes before her features go hard. The moment of shared anger at Naruto is gone in an instant, and Sasuke fights the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose and just walk out of the room to find Karin on his own. "I'll let her know to narrow her field of search."

"Of course you will," Sakura says, not even bothering to hide the bitterness in her voice. "Whatever it takes to find Sarada."

"Can I go?" Bolt's voice is small from behind Hinata, but it draws their attention again. 

"Yes," Naruto says with a sigh, picking up a marker to set over the spot his son pointed out. "I'll talk to you later about this. Go on to bed now."

The boy shrinks again, but he turns to retreat into the Hokage's quarters as quickly as possible without exactly running away. There's a strange timbre to Hinata's expression that Sasuke can't read — Hyuuga faces have always been difficult to read — directed at Naruto's golden head, bowed over the map already.

He glances up after a moment, looking surprised to see her still there. "Hinata? It's fine, I won't scold him much. I know it's not Bolt's fault that Sarada got captured."

The last part is decorated with a glare in Sasuke's direction, but Hinata's mouth twists, very briefly, before smoothing out again.

"I'll put them both to bed," she says. "Goodnight, Sakura, Sasuke-san. Rokudaime."

Naruto's attention is already back on the map when she closes the door behind her with a soft click, but Sakura's looking at him in that particular way again. Sasuke finally takes the time to look at Kakashi, to see if the man is likely to give away any hint of what the hell is going on, but Kakashi has found himself a spot that keeps even his uncovered eyes shadowed. Even as a retired kage, the man is either a consummate ninja or a dustball, unreasonably able to disappear into corners.

Kakashi likely wouldn't answer any questions Sasuke poses, in any case.

"I'll have our patrol narrow their radius and head into Grass territory undercover," Naruto is saying. "Kakashi-sensei?"

"I'll let Pakkun know as well," he says. "Sakura, if you have any personal item of Sarada-chan's with you, it'll help them — Shino was only able to provide them with her travel pack, and that was new Academy-issue."

Sakura nods, digging through her her med-kit, location of countless poison antidotes, her doctor's pad, and anything else of use. Academy-issued supplies are a relatively new idea, something Sakura had written they were hoping would decrease friction between children with families and children relying on Konoha's chronically-underfunded orphan management system. That the Academy pack is all that Sarada left behind makes Sasuke's jaw clench again, but he relaxes it in order to bite his thumb, a red-tailed hawk poofing quietly onto his shoulder in the next moment.

"Do you know this territory?" He asks, tapping his index finger against the map. Kouji — the second child of his parents' second clutch, but easily the fastest — cranes his neck and tilts his head, the fierce orange disc of one eye glittering.

"I do," the hawk says. "The sensor?"

"Tell her to focus here," Sasuke confirms, ignoring the tensing of Sakura's shoulders. "Report back to me as soon as you've communicated the message." 

The hawk disappears out the window Kakashi has already opened for it, a small dark shape winging away into the night, and he only then turns back to his former teammates. Naruto's giving him a dark look, but Sakura's face has already set into businesslike lines.

"I'll come with you in the morning to search," she says to him, and without bothering to wait for a response from any of them: "I've already informed my assistant at the hospital. Naruto, she has full authority for as long as my daughter is missing."

"Sakura-chan," Naruto starts, one hand half-lifting and finally managing to look contrite, but she turns on her heel and heads for the door. "— Sasuke."

"We're done here," Sasuke says, gives Kakashi the barest of nods, and follows her.

—

The sun isn't even up when a banging on the window has Sasuke and Sakura both bolting out of bed, the kunai kept under the mattress as a matter of course already in hand. Sakura is quicker than Sasuke to recognize the silhouette of Naruto against the starlight and tosses her kunai into the target by the door with a curse, stomping over to throw up the sash and start in on what will doubtless be a powerful tirade.

Sasuke turns on the bedroom light so she can see for it, then pauses in the same moment she does when it strikes Naruto's face.

"What is it?" Sakura asks, alert now.

"Bolt's gone," Naruto croaks, stumbling inside more than leaping gracefully. "I don't know when — Hinata put him to bed right after he came into the office and by the time I headed up he wasn't in his room."

Assuming Naruto came to their window as soon as he noticed, he'd apparently stayed in the office for hours after they'd left, Sasuke realises, and narrows his gaze at the bruising showing under Naruto's eyes. Naruto doesn't notice, sagging where he stands until Sakura fusses him over to the bed where he sits heavily to scrub at his face with his hands.

"Nobody sensed any disturbances," he says, looking haggard. "I can't sense his chakra in the village, but he can't have gone far."

It's not that hard to go far from Konoha in a night, Sasuke thinks, but he's old enough now to know not to say that out loud in a moment like this. He replaces his kunai under the mattress, ignoring the distress-ache in his left arm with practice. 

"He was pretty upset in the office," Sakura's saying, squeezing Naruto's shoulder reassuringly. She'd been sleeping next to Sasuke not ten minutes ago, their bodies turned away from each other like parentheses to different statements; she looks more at home comforting Naruto now than she had the entire time they'd stepped awkwardly around each other getting ready for bed. Sasuke turns away from them and instead opens the window the rest of the way when he senses Hyuuga chakra. Hinata comes into view in a flash of dark hair and pale eyes, landing lightly on the roof and giving an incline of her head that is more hurried than polite for the first time he's seen.

"Sasuke-san," she acknowledges hastily, slipping into the bedroom when he steps aside. "Naruto, I went to Iruka-sensei's and he hasn't seen him, but when I went back to the house I found this —" She holds up a piece of paper, hastily folded over.

"A note?" Sakura frowns even as Naruto stands, looking hopeful. 

"He put it in the cereal box," Hinata explains, handing it to Naruto. "I think he was hoping that we wouldn't notice he was gone until the morning, but ..."

"He went to try and rescue Sarada-chan himself," Naruto reads off the note, disbelief in his voice. "That little — I can't _believe_ him!"

"He sounds exactly like you," Sasuke comments, reading the determined scrawl over Naruto's shoulder: _'It WASN'T my fault, but I'm gonna go rescue her and then everyone will know that I'm a HERO, not the kind of guy who gets girls kidnapped!!'_

"Of course _you're_ calm now," Naruto flares up immediately, whipping around to crush the note into Sasuke's chest; the movement is sudden enough that Sasuke takes a half-step back, an arm snapping into a defensive position without thought. "I bet you're _happy_ that Bolt's rushing into danger to save _your_ daughter when it wasn't even his fault —"

"Fuck you, Naruto," Sasuke snaps, startled by the heat of the anger that sweeps over him, over something he'd thought he'd be used to by now — but coming from Naruto, somehow — "What the hell do you think I am to get happy over a _kid_ getting into danger —"

"Who even knows with you," Naruto's furious enough that his chakra is stirring the leaves of the plants Sakura has lined up along the tops of the bookshelves, wind whipping through everyone's hair. "Who even knows if you're even really angry about —"

"You don't want to finish that."

For a second, Sasuke's confused, because he's neither moved nor spoken but Naruto is abruptly out of his face, looking equally stunned by the suddenness of his change in location. How —

"You were going to say something you don't believe," Sakura continues from where she's yanked Naruto back several paces. "And that you know isn't true."

"You don't need to defend him, Sakura-chan," Naruto grumbles, but the immediate violence is gone from his body, the air in the room settling. Sakura lets him go and Hinata steps in. She doesn't touch him; just stands close enough that she's in arm reach.

"At least we know what direction he's headed," Sakura says, businesslike now. "With any luck we'll overtake him on the way and you can yell at him all you want."

"Yeah," Naruto mumbles, uncrumpling Bolt's note to look at it again. Sasuke watches him, still not entirely sure what just happened until he realises that Sakura is standing at his own shoulder, frowning at him.

"You okay?" She asks, _sotto voce_ , and he blinks at her. She touches his left elbow, just a brush of healing chakra, and it's only then that he realises how much chakra he'd gathered to it. The prosthetic is fizzling with it; it's a wonder that his entire arm isn't crackling.

"I'm fine," he says, forcing the chakra down. "— I don't need you to defend me. I know Naruto's an idiot."

She gives him a long look, then sighs, shoulders slumping in resignation. For the first time he sees how tired she is, realises that it's been longer than he wants to remember since he last asked how she's doing. "I wanted to. Is that alright with you?" 

"Sakura," he starts, but she's already pushed past him into the living room, returning with the travel bags they'd put together after the meeting in Naruto's office, packing in grim silence. It's an obvious enough gesture, but Sasuke almost wants to fight it, because — separate parentheses is what they are now, and the thing is he's never been sure if it hasn't what they've always been. 

If he knew, at least — but their child is missing and another one is gone, and now is not the time. He starts for the closet, ready to find his own travel gear, when Hinata's suddenly raised voice surprises him into stillness. She and Naruto have been talking in hushed tones that sound like hisses, Bolt's note in Naruto's hand and Hinata pulling in two travel packs from where she'd left them sitting on the roof in her haste to share the note.

"I am coming with you, Naruto," she says, tone final, and when Naruto opens his mouth to speak she raises her normally-calm voice another notch: "Hyuuga are customary on search-and-rescue missions, and I know Bolt's chakra better than anyone else."

"Himawari needs you here," Naruto argues, looking like he's trying to sound less agitated than he's feeling and failing. "We can't just both be gone at once —"

"Himawari is at my sister's," Hinata says, unmoved. "She will be safe in the Hyuuga compound. I told her that we will bring her brother back, and she is old enough to understand."

"She needs her _mother_ with her," Naruto insists, but that seems to be the trigger word — Hinata steps back from him, spine so straight that it's outright stiff for a woman who normally moves with precise grace. 

"Himawari knows that I am thinking of her even if I am not there," she says. Naruto tries to break in and she holds up a hand, an economical sweep of movement that is somehow enough to make Naruto subside to an unusual degree. He's still glowering mutinously until she continues: "The one she needs is her father. She wanted reassurance that you would look for Bolt and take care of him."

"What —" Naruto looks stricken. "She knows that I —"

"She knows that the village is your priority, as is right for the Hokage." Sasuke is impressed with how cowed Naruto seems to be in front of such a calm front, but there's also something he can't put his finger on, something he'd expected out of an Uzumaki household that isn't there. "She still needs you."

"I try," Naruto starts.

"Bolt needed you," Hinata says, merciless. "He is trying to rescue Sarada-chan because he wants to live up to your name. Do you remember what it felt like to not be good enough, Naruto? I do."

Sasuke's never seen so bloodless an evisceration. He catches Sakura's eye without meaning to, raises an eyebrow. She presses her mouth into a thin line and gives a slight shake of her head: _later_. He recognizes the message: it's the same technique she uses when there's news that she thinks Sarada shouldn't hear.

"I just don't want anything to happen to you," Naruto is mumbling, caving, and Hinata is smiling a thin, wan smile at him, the moment of fire done:

"I understand, Naruto."

The conversation seems over enough that Sasuke is able to disappear into the bathroom to change without alerting either of them to the fact that they are having a scene in someone else's bedroom — not that location has ever stopped Naruto from making a scene, but Hinata is apparently more similar to him than Sasuke expected. The last thing Sasuke wants to deal with is more marital strife than he already has before they've even left the village.

"Kakashi-sensei went ahead earlier tonight," Naruto is saying when he comes back out, handing a small scroll to one of his ANBU guards, a rat mask perched on Sasuke and Sakura's bedroom windowsill. "Send him word as fast as you can to have Pakkun double back and look for Bolt — he can go on to meet Gai-sensei at the planned location so they can start searching for Sarada-chan."

Sakura emerges from the closet as the ANBU takes off, fully equipped for speedy travel, and Sasuke blinks when he catches just the hint of a questioning glance in Hinata's direction. There's no change on Hinata's face that he can tell, but Sakura seems satisfied, hauling her pack onto her shoulders.

"Lock that window, Naruto," she calls to him, marching for their front door. "Not all of us are uncivilized like you."

"What —" Naruto squawks, managing to sound closer to normal than he has all night. "Kakashi-sensei never uses the door and you don't call _him_ uncivilized —"

"Shut up," Sasuke says, holding the bedroom door open for Hinata and shooting Naruto an unimpressed glare. 

"This is _not_ what I missed about doing missions," Naruto grouses all the way through the living room and while Sakura bolts the door as Sasuke makes sure their chakra wards are in place. It's not the most auspicious beginning to a mission that Sasuke has ever seen.

The three of them have never really had any auspicious beginnings. He almost feels bad for Hinata, tagging along with their combined bad luck, but wipes the feeling as they hit the cool morning air and head for the gate. Outside of the house they're all just silent shapes blurring black through the dawn.

-

They eat breakfast on the move, Hinata scouting ahead for any trace of Bolt’s chakra and Naruto trailing behind her. Sasuke keeps himself to rearguard in order to avoid their conversations as much as possible, but it means that he doesn’t have a chance to corner Sakura until they break for a late lunch, a hastily-cobbled mash of the Akimichi clan’s new meal-replacement pills and water to wash them down. They’re not as vile as soldier pills, but they also take longer to properly kick in, which means they’re forced to spend some time recuperating by a shallow streambed.

Sakura doesn’t look delighted when he settles down next to her, but it’s a long time since he’s seen Sakura delighted about much, and he’s beginning to wonder exactly when he lost track of days and years passing. 

“About what Bolt said last night,” he says without preamble, and her mouth twists before settling into something more resigned. “Is it just him who thinks Sarada is weird?”

She doesn’t bother to mince her words, taking another gulp of water before answering shortly: “No.”

“I thought something was off in her letters,” he mutters, resisting the urge to rub at an ache in his right knee. He travels a lot, but it’s been awhile since he’s had to make this kind of prolonged dash of speed. 

“If you knew, why didn’t you come home to talk to her about it?” The thing Sasuke had learned about Sakura after marriage had been that sharpness, a weapon she’d used almost exclusively against Naruto when they were kids but one that seems to hone itself over time. He’s seen her use it on people in the village now and again, the few times they’ve gone out to eat when he’s back. 

“You know why,” he says instead of starting an argument. She tenses, looks like she wants to say something angry -- and then sighs, the line of resignation settling over her shoulders again.

“Have you ever considered, Sasuke,” she says. “That what you think is best for her is actually working against her?”

“It seemed to be working before she started the Academy,” Sasuke’s frowning, tense because this isn’t a subject he wants to get into now -- get into ever, really. 

That was, in fact, the entire point of letting Konoha keep its secret about the Uchiha.

“That’s because _I_ took her everywhere before she started the Academy,” Sakura throws up her hands, exasperation in the arc of movement. “No parent was going to say to my face that they didn’t want their kids playing with my daughter, but Sarada is --” She pauses, deflates a little: “She’s too much like me at that age. She’s not good at trying for friends alone, and she wants you to be around.”

“When I’m around, people are perfectly happy to say to my face that they want nothing to do with her.” Sasuke remembers the moment, crystal clear, when he’d first brought Sarada to the playground by the Academy and watched other parents lead their children away. He’d been a young father, then, still astonished by the fact that she’d learned how to walk on her own, still stunned every time she called him _Papa_. “She has a better chance if people learn to stop associating her with me.”

He hadn’t known then that there was new pain to learn, but Konoha had proved him wrong. Konoha has a way of proving him wrong.

“Sasuke,” Sakura says, soft without losing the coolness: “I’m trying to respect your decision about your clan. But you need to consider that keeping her in the dark might not be helping her. In case you forgot, Itachi --”

“Don’t,” he says, sharp now, because that’s a topic --

“ _Itachi_ did it to you and it didn’t help you, did it,” Sakura continues, pale now except for a spot of colour on each cheek, and Sasuke stands, starts to walk away because if he stays where he is another minute this is going to be a full-blown fight. “Don’t walk away from this because you don’t want to face the idea that your plan didn’t work out --”

“What are you suggesting, then?” Sasuke snaps, too tired himself not to let the frustration darken his voice into a growl; Sakura’s on her feet too by now, looking desperate and angry at the same time. “I don’t see you giving out any ideas, you’re not the one who sees how people stare --”

“I’m the one who _raises_ her!” It’s a slap in the face, loud enough that it might as well have been a real one. Naruto and Hinata’s conversation, an uneven murmur in the background until now, pauses, and Sasuke’s keenly aware of Naruto’s gaze fixed on him. “I’m the _only_ one!”

It sounds like a story in his own head now: once upon a time he'd walked into the village and Sakura had been there. In all his long trek he'd sought a home and there, limned in Konoha's early dawn light, he'd understood that she represented something he'd been looking for. At the time, newly twenty and amazed by what felt like an endless patience, something as enduring as Naruto’s insistent friendship and less demanding, it had seemed the right thing. 

For a long time, it had seemed like the right thing, Sakura in his arms like the embodiment of a second chance, and he’d listened to Kakashi’s advice: _it’s still too soon after the war, Sasuke. People are rebuilding. We can’t afford to lose their trust in the village now, not when we need their support to change the way they think. This is going to be a new way of life. We can’t have instability now._

And there had been Sakura, her parents deeply apprehensive and unwillingly accepting of their daughter’s choice. It hadn’t been the right time to tell the Uchiha truth at the end of the war, the wounds of his own actions still fresh; it hadn’t been the right time afterward, when Kakashi and the other four kage were delicately piecing together a non-aggression agreement between the big villages. And then -- and he’s still not sure how to track that time, and there’s only more distance from it with each passing year -- there was Sarada, and a burden he hadn’t wanted his daughter to live under.

And now there’s this: Naruto beginning to get to his feet, concern in his face as he looks at Sakura, anger when he looks at Sasuke. Sakura, shaking in front of him, flushed with anger, and she’s never been the personification of anything but a person.

But they’ve lived a decade of this. 

“Quit being an asshole, Sasuke,” Naruto says finally, when the silence has dragged on too long to be anything but awkward. He moves over to Sakura, puts a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Can you stop being a dick for more than five minutes at a time?”

 _Can you stop moving in on my wife,_ Sasuke thinks, but he bites down the bitterness and turns away instead.

“We need to get going,” he says, and doesn’t look at them. “If Pakkun doesn’t show up to reroute us, we’ll be at the border by nightfall.”

\--

Pakkun doesn’t show, but Karin does. About an hour short of the border, there’s a flare of Uzumaki chakra that isn’t Naruto’s and she drops in at Sasuke’s left without bothering to introduce herself.

“I ran into your old Hokage’s weird dog on the way, yeah,” she says once she confirms that they’re heading in the right direction, pushing her glasses up her nose and matching her pace to his with ease. “He asked me if I was doing anything, as if I _wouldn’t_ be when Sarada-chan is missing.”

Karin’s not infrequently contracted by Konoha for tracking missions, and Sasuke knows she’s met Sarada multiple times before. He’s just not sure exactly what happened during those meetings that makes Sakura so furious about every mention of Karin; he’s always assumed it was something between them that makes Sakura angry with him for remaining in regular contact with her. That, and the fact that Sasuke had travelled with her for a period of time before he’d come back to Konoha, but that’s years in the past. Suigetsu is her sword-arm more often than not these days.

“Did he say if he’d found anything?” Naruto demands, having fallen back from Hinata’s side as soon as he’d spotted Karin. 

“He said he was tracking another scent,” Karin says with a shrug. Sasuke’s not surprised Pakkun didn’t divulge his mission; the dog shares Kakashi’s caution about information. “Didn’t say what for, and I wanted to get to Sasuke, so I didn’t stay and chat. Why?”

“Bolt ran off to rescue Sarada.” Sakura’s surged up from the rearguard now as well, taking up the position at Naruto’s right and not looking at Sasuke when she speaks. They’re running like genin on their first mission out of the village, no sense of staggering positions or formation, but they’re also some of the very few shinobi that can afford to be caught off-guard.

“Bolt,” Karin says slowly, drawing out the syllables like she’s not sure what she’s supposed to be picturing. It’s a little odd that she hasn’t met Naruto’s children when she’s familiar with Sarada, but it takes a few seconds before understanding dawns in her expression: “Ah! Naruto’s kid?! That explains it.”

“Explains what?!” Naruto demands. Sasuke glances up ahead at Hinata’s figure still leading them, her Byakugan no doubt sweeping across the field in regular intervals. She can probably tell that they’re all clumped together like this, but she stays in position, keeping a steady speed.

“I thought I felt Uzumaki chakra heading in that direction, but it didn’t make sense,” Karin explains, and curves one pointing finger in a wide arc from behind them to somewhere roughly west-by-northwest, closer to the checkpoint than the base Sasuke had known. “There’s no way it was a kid, though. It was travelling way too fast.”

“Too fast?” Sasuke repeats, frowning, because it’s one thing if Bolt has managed to get pretty far from Konoha -- a handful of soldier pills and an Academy student could run themselves into the ground at a speedy pace -- but it’s impossible for him to actually outpace them at the speed they’re moving.

“Kouji said they might be flying by the travel pattern.” Karin repeats the same gesture with her hand flattened out, flowing through the air: “Apparently there are good updrafts along that flight path. Something about the meadows.”

“What other flying summons are big enough to carry people?” Naruto glares at Sasuke as if he might have a roster of every aerial summons available. Sasuke keeps his own expression neutral both on principle and on the correct assumption that it will only make Naruto more annoyed.

“Most birds don’t like to fly at night,” he says, waving a hand briefly at the darkening sky above them. “Only a few exceptions wouldn’t be night-blind. Owls, but they usually contract with clans further north than this. Even then they’d have to know what they were looking for, and how would they know Bolt left the village?”

“I don’t know,” Karin says with a shrug, ducking easily out the way of a low-hanging branch. “Naruto’s chakra is distinctive. Any sensor within a hundred miles would know if _he_ left the village.”

Naruto’s face goes pale. “So -- my leaving to come look for Bolt might have alerted them to hunt for him too?”

Sasuke doesn’t miss the terminology: _hunt_. He glances at Sakura out of habit, Naruto’s moods one of the few things they still keep tabs on jointly when they’re all together like this, but she’s looking at Karin with an expression like she can’t decide whether to be angry at her or pleased to have the information. She speaks after a moment, voice hard: “Naruto could have been leaving on a diplomatic trip. How would they know he was looking for Bolt?”

“Please,” Karin says with a roll of her eyes. “All you need is a civilian with an in at the Academy to see who's missing from morning roll call and check with someone whether the Hokage was scheduled to be away or not. It’s kind of hard to keep what’s happening in Konoha a secret when you have a city looming over you.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Sakura flares up, eyes flashing. “Why would someone betray the Hokage like that --”

“Money,” Naruto cuts in, and they all look at him in surprise. His expression is tired again, lines around his eyes that are deeper than the last time Sasuke really looked at him. “We’ve been having information leaks that we think go through the city for a while. It’s money.”

“We haven’t gotten a ransom note for Sarada yet,” Sasuke points out. “If this were about money, something would have arrived by now.”

Which is in itself not actually a comforting thought, but Sasuke has made too many enemies in his youth to worry about whether the possibilities are comforting or not. At best, this is some kind of ransom scenario and the kidnappers are just behind the eight-ball on timing. At worst -- 

Well, Sasuke has a lot of enemies, and Sarada being in the Academy has been fuel for the rumour mill since before they’d even enrolled her.

_The Uchiha all go crazy._

_What is the Hokage thinking?_

He pushes the thought away at the same time that Karin says, sounding largely unconcerned: “Anyway, both chakra signals are fine. I can’t tell if they’re _happy_ or not, but they’re steady.”

“And they’re heading in the same direction?” Naruto asks, turning to speed back up to update Hinata, probably.

“Sarada-chan’s hasn’t moved much since I locked onto it,” Karin confirms, which makes both Sasuke and Sakura tense. “The Uzumaki one is converging on it, but I’ll tell you if it changes and you can rescue yours.”

“Thanks,” Naruto says, absently, then stops to add: “Konoha will pay you for your time, just let them know and I’ll sign off on it when I get back.”

“Nah,” Karin says easily, waving it off with an affected sway in her step toward Sasuke and a leer. “Consider this a _personal_ favour, Sasuke --”

“ _Karin_ ,” Sasuke snaps, not looking at Sakura for all the good it will do. He doesn’t need to look or be a sensor to feel the sudden flare of her chakra as Naruto hesitates awkwardly a branch ahead, apparently caught between the need to tell Hinata the news and the need to defend Sakura like the knight he’s always wanted to be for her, and suddenly Sasuke is sick of Naruto _hovering_ like this -- glares at him because he can’t at Sakura and growls at Karin at the same time. “Rendezvous with Kouji and work with him to keep track of Bolt’s chakra, we’ll keep heading for Sarada --”

“Ah,” Karin interrupts, sounding deeply unimpressed in a tone that he’s learned only with the passage of time and the ebbing of her need to be anything other than mercurial and sarcastic around him. “Haruno, I’d calm that big jealous chakra. If Sasuke were going to cheat on you, you can bet I’d have gotten those personal favours paid back by now.”

She peels off as soon as she’s done talking, leaving Sasuke gaping after her and Sakura -- Sakura staring at him, looking a little poleaxed, when he inevitably has to check for her reaction.

Unbelievably, he can feel a blush starting at his ears.

“She,” he sputters, trying but largely unable to decipher the expression on his wife’s features. There’s definitely also something going with Naruto’s stupid face just an arm’s length ahead, but: “I --”

“Chakra at 500 metres,” Hinata shouts suddenly, making herself Sasuke’s favourite person by coming to a halt and raising a hand for silence. They drop to a dead stop on separate branches, senses straining. He can feel the pulse of Hyuuga chakra from where he is and has to wonder what Hinata has been doing all these years: he hasn’t heard of her leaving Konoha since she married Naruto.

Then again, it’s not like he’s made a point of keeping up with the movements of Naruto’s wife. 

“Just one,” she says after a moment, beckoning them closer. “I don’t think he’s noticed us, but he’s definitely keeping guard of something. He’s in some kind of small clearing.”

“I’ll go,” Sasuke says immediately, and shoots Naruto a quelling glare when he opens his mouth to protest. “I have more experience in handling stealth missions than any of you right now.”

“That doesn’t mean you go alone, stupid bastard,” Naruto hisses back, startling Sasuke with what might be first time Naruto has called him one in the last twenty-four hours. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with --”

“Unorganized Grass-nin, probably,” he dismisses, and Naruto growls: 

“You don’t know that! They’ve got your kid _and_ mine, do you think that’s a coincidence --”

“Are you forgetting that their mothers are also standing right here?” Sakura cuts in, looking completely underwhelmed by both of them instead of just Sasuke for once. “You two always overdo it when you go in -- if there’s just one person, we can capture them for information --”

“Or he’ll just send up a flare if we all descend on them at once like a bunch of clumsy genin,” Sasuke snaps, earning himself a more pointed glare. “If I go alone, I can put him under a genjutsu before he notices anything wrong --”

“Or you’ll make him pass out by showing him his own death or something because you don’t know the meaning of excess,” Naruto interjects, making Sasuke want to show Naruto a genjutsu of being gagged, since learning Hokage vocabulary has clearly gone to his head. “Listen, if I --”

“At least two people should go,” Hinata cuts in, startling them out of the tight, angry huddle Sasuke hadn’t realised they’d formed, his and Naruto’s shoulders curving in and away from her to form the apex of Team 7’s triad of disagreement. “There’s something else there, but I can’t tell what it is.”

“Not a person, Hinata-chan?” Sakura frowns, shouldering past both of them to stand next to Hinata as if doing so will help her see whatever it is the Hyuuga has caught.

“It’s chakra, but it’s not a person,” Hinata confirms, brow deeply furrowed over the veins of the Byakugan. “I don’t know what it is -- I haven’t seen something like it before. It’s in the ground somehow.”

“That settles it,” Sasuke starts, but Sakura cuts him off by touching him for the first time since they’ve left. 

By slapping her hand over his mouth. Naruto goes wide-eyed before he gets gleeful and Sasuke pushes it away in the next breath, but it gives her enough time to clip out at both of them:

“It settles that _you two_ idiots are going to go, because _clearly_ you have some kind of size insecurity to prove here --” The glee vanishes from Naruto’s face, replaced by indignant horror and a kind of squeaking denial that Sakura bulldozes over with perfect unconcern: “ _We_ will follow and back you up if you end up in trouble.”

Before either of them can get out a protest, Hinata adds: “The guard is moving -- we must go without delay.”

Not meeting Naruto’s mutinous glare with one of his own because damn it, they aren’t twelve anymore, Sasuke drops to a lower branch and starts in the direction Hinata indicates, Sharingan swirling into place to pick up the first hint of enemy chakra. Behind him, Naruto mutters under his breath before picking out his own path along an adjacent treeline.

Sasuke can’t clearly hear what Sakura is murmuring to Hinata just before they’re out of earshot, but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to know.

“Being Hokage isn’t all sitting at a desk, you know,” Naruto grumbles at him when they happen to land on the same branch at one point, making Sasuke slow just to raise a thoroughly skeptical eyebrow at him before they leap apart again, coming back together a few trees later.

“You could have fooled me,” he says when they do. “You have people you send everywhere but Suna.”

Naruto goes to Suna personally; Sasuke has incidentally never had much need to go to Suna. Gaara keeps his people in line, as uncertain as things are in a village that has relied so heavily on shinobi income up until now -- it’s one thing to try to transition nin to less active duty in fertile Fire country, but Wind is seven parts desert, two parts mountain, and one part salt-crusted shoreline. As far as Sasuke knows from skirting the border, the people are approximately as crusty.

“Suna’s our closest ally.” Naruto shoots him a glare at first, as if daring him to say something about how Suna is a _personal_ ally -- which Sasuke has before, a long time ago, when their communication was face-to-face instead of via one hawk or another. They pause the conversation when a row of birches blurs between them like static; there’s something more thoughtful in Naruto’s expression that Sasuke doesn’t like when they rejoin and slow to approach the clearing.

“What?” He snaps, wary, and Naruto shakes his head.

“Never mind,” he says, then nods his head in the direction of the clearing. They’re close enough now that they can sense the pulse of chakra even without Hinata’s assistance; there’s definitely something odd that Sasuke can’t place his finger on along with the faint buzz of the sentry. 

“I’ll go first,” Sasuke says again, cutting Naruto off when he opens his mouth: “-- I’ve always been better with stealth and you know it, so quit wasting time and watch my back.”

He starts off before Naruto can complain, releasing just a whisper of chakra to weave an illusion -- subtle, because Naruto is wrong about what Sasuke’s techniques are these days -- of no disturbance. The edge of the sentry’s chakra encounters his own and he lets them entangle, ensnaring the man’s senses until he can step out of the tree cover without being noticed. From here he can clearly see that there’s a small hole in the ground, perfectly circular and wide enough that someone very slender or small could just squeeze in.

He can’t sense Uchiha chakra other than his own, but he quickens his step anyway. It’s not until he’s directly behind the guard that his presence becomes too obvious for the light illusion, but that’s all he needs. The man crumples with a precise strike at a pressure point on his neck, Sasuke catching him by the collar and lowering him to land more quietly. He adds a light layer of sleep genjutsu, just in case, before turning to whatever was being guarded.

The bottom of the hole isn’t visible -- not because it’s deep, but because it’s dark. There’s something that’s confusing even the Sharingan’s reading of chakra, what looks almost like a shimmering net of something oilier than chakra. It stirs a memory that Sasuke can’t place, an impression of something he saw a long time ago.

Before he can place it he feels the rush of wind chakra that means Naruto has lost patience with waiting and has appeared at his shoulder, crouching by the sentry and giving his cheek an experimental poke before squinting up at Sasuke.

“I thought you weren’t going to knock him out,” he accuses, and Sasuke makes an impatient noise.

“He’s just under a sleep genjutsu,” he says, shoving the man out of Naruto’s grip with a foot. “You can wake him up whenever. This is more important.”

Naruto doesn’t bother standing, kneeling instead to peer over the edge. Ass in the air and head poked halfway into the ground, dressed in an orange jacket Sasuke is impressed Hinata allowed him to purchase, he still doesn’t look like the genin he was. Too tall, now, lean with the bulk of youth long melted away, hair trimmed savagely short. Sasuke is tempted to knee him so he falls headfirst into the hole.

As it turns out, it’s not his choice.

“If I couldn’t see anything, you won’t,” he says, or starts to say -- he’s halfway through the sentence when the man he’d knocked out gives an incoherent grunt, twitches twice, and then explodes.

The last thing Sasuke hears is Sakura’s voice, shouting a name he can’t decipher.

\--

“Oi.”

His ears are ringing, a faint tinny noise ricocheting around his head.

“Oi, Sasuke. You awake?”

This has happened before, he thinks groggily. A long, long time ago, something oddly similar to this; when he cracks his eyes open the light is even almost the same, a pale watery sort of moonlight. When was --

“I know you’re awake,” Naruto’s voice says, and then a hand is hauling his face up and the distinct texture of bandaged fingers is prying one eye wide open. “How d’you tell concussion again -- Sakura-chan told me once, but --”

“Dilated pupils,” Sasuke croaks, and then slaps Naruto’s hands away to shove back and away.

He gets about a foot and a half.

His back hits dirt at the same time Naruto says: “Wait --”

“The fuck,” he says, because his head is still aching and he’s definitely getting too old for this sort of thing. He finally takes a look around them, a belated instinct that is apparently secondary to being annoyed at Naruto. Around them is dirt. Just dirt. Above them is --

The Sharingan picks it out more clearly this time, a shimmering layer of chakra hovering a few arms’ lengths over their heads. On top of the chakra there is more dirt, enough to block out the entire view of whatever lies between them and the surface. Wherever the surface might be. Abruptly, he remembers where he’s seen this type of chakra formation before.

“Chakra seals,” he realizes. There are points around the edge of the hole that must be the anchor points for the jutsu, because that’s what this is: a sealing jutsu, anchored on more seals, powerful enough that even when he deactivates the Sharingan his right eye can still see the faint shimmer of power. “We’re sealed in.”

“Can’t use chakra,” Naruto confirms, which makes Sasuke’s gaze snap to him in surprise. “I already tried.”

“ _You_ tried,” Sasuke repeats. “And you couldn’t use chakra?”

For as long as Sasuke has known Naruto, his enormous, excessive, unfair wealth of chakra has been able to power him through inconvenient situations. His own chakra reserves aren’t inconsiderable, and now that his thoughts are coming back together he can remember the instinctive flare of Susano’o at the moment of impact, but when he focuses and tries to summon the protective armour now, not so much as the fizzle of a ribcage appears. It’s like ...

“It’s being sapped away,” he says, watching the hints of Mangekyou purple wisp off his body and disappear upward into the sheet of seal-chakra. “How ...”

“Sakura-chan said she and Hinata are going to try to find another guard to interrogate about what it is,” Naruto says, making Sasuke blink at him.

“Sakura said?” He looks upward at the crumbled dirt. “When did she --”

“A bit after I first woke up,” Naruto says, managing to look smug about having done so before Sasuke despite the fact that they are stuck in a hole. A hole barely wide enough for someone half their heights to lie down in, which means that if Sasuke so much as extends his legs a few inches he’ll be stuck grazing his feet against Naruto’s. “They couldn’t see us, but they could hear us -- er, they could before Sakura-chan tried to break the seal by opening the earth to us and knocked more of the dirt loose.”

Sasuke is, somehow, not particularly surprised that Sakura tried to punch through the earth itself to follow the sound of Naruto’s voice.

“The nine-tails?” He asks, in lieu of saying the thought out loud, and Naruto shakes his head, blue eyes a weird washed-out pale in the unearthly light of seal-chakra.

“I tried, but he yelled at me before I got even a drop of chakra out of him. Said it would drain him out of me and probably kill me,” he says, which makes sense for Naruto because he _would_ have an ancient chakra demon looking out for his welfare.

Sasuke shoves his bangs out of his face and looks upward again; Naruto follows the movement with a frown.

“There are anchor points,” he says, narrowing his eyes at one. “If I --”

The moment he tries to use the Rinnegan, however, pain lances through his head -- enough that he nearly doubles with it, saved from crashing his head into Naruto’s chest by hands bracing his shoulders, which as if it weren’t humiliating enough on his own comes accompanied by Naruto’s voice, all concern: “Whoa! What is it, you alright?”

He shoves back again, gets stopped by the dirt again, narrowly resists the urge to thud the back of his head against the walls of the hole until he’s knocked himself out. 

“Doujutsu chakra is funnelled through the brain,” he grits out, and when he opens his eyes and sees Naruto’s perplexed stare doesn’t even try to resist the urge; Sasuke kicks Naruto’s ankle like a twelve-year-old and growls: “ _You_ try getting chakra sapped from your _brain_ and see how it feels, you complete idiot!”

“Don’t call me an idiot!” Naruto’s response comes without missing so much as a beat, smacking a punch against Sasuke’s arm. “You’re the one who tried it!”

“I’d try anything to get out of a tiny hole with _you_ of all people,” Sasuke snaps, and ignores the flash of hurt that blinks over Naruto’s features. 

“Well, fuck you too,” Naruto mutters after a breath, folding his arms and glaring off to the side. The side means that he’s staring directly at a small chunk of rock left sticking out of the otherwise smoothed-down wall of the hole. Whoever dug the thing made an effort to make it neat, which makes Sasuke wonder how many of these there are.

The only consolation is that they’re clearly meant to keep prisoners alive and unharmed, which means that if Sarada is caught in one --

Sarada, he remembers with a cold shock, and straightens suddenly enough that Naruto flinches.

“Sakura and Hinata are looking for someone to get us out?” He demands. “What about Sarada?!”

“Hinata’s going to look for her chakra too,” Naruto says, looking startled. “But it’s best if we’re all there, in case they need backup --”

“Sakura was trained by a Sannin, she can handle a bunch of Grass-nin using pits and seals,” Sasuke says, furious. “Of course your priorities are screwed up -- we can survive a few hours in a hole, but Sarada’s already been gone for a day and a half --”

“If she’s in one of these, the worst she’ll be is hungry,” Naruto argues. “But if we don’t have the power to get her out right away and they panic --”

“If they panic and move her, then we’ll be who knows how far behind them,” Sasuke’s a hairsbreadth away from grabbing Naruto by the collar and shaking him. “Damn it, don’t any of you _think_?”

“We’re not ignoring Sarada-chan, you stupid bastard,” Naruto kicks him again, looking like he’s not far from grabbing him and shaking him in turn. “We’re trying to maximize our chances of getting her back with minimal damage and greatest efficiency -- you act like I’ve never handled a kidnap situation before --”

“ _Have_ you?” Sasuke hisses, poking Naruto square in the chest, hard enough that Naruto grabs his finger instinctively. “Last I heard, Nara handles all of the delicate negotiations your office does and _he’s_ no fan of mine --”

“What -- that’s not true!” Naruto flares up, colour rising to his cheeks and making his face look like it’s glowing under the half-light. “Shika supports me with information, that’s all --”

“Holds you up with puppet strings, more like,” Sasuke sneers, twisting his hand free with a disgusted swipe of movement. “Nara and Kakashi both, you’re just a face on the mountain talking big about change but keeping the old system alive --”

Naruto punches him, fist cracking hard across his jaw even with the limited swing radius of the tiny space. Sasuke’s head snaps to the side with the movement, the hole only giving him enough room to half-compensate for the strike with his own motion, and in the aftermath the dead silence is broken only by Naruto’s furious drawn breaths.

Gingerly, Sasuke rotates his jaw, touching it with his bandaged left hand to gauge for swelling. Naruto didn’t hold back. He’s lucky for the constrained space; a strike like that landed in the open would have ended in dislocation.

“You too,” he says, instead of saying: _I shouldn’t have said that._ Instead of saying: _look at us. Look what’s happened to us._

“You’re a bastard,” Naruto says, voice low. 

“Yeah,” Sasuke says, and straightens, carefully rotating his neck. He’s too old for this, too old to be alive in all logic, but there’s no lasting damage. 

There’s another long silence, and then Naruto closes his eyes, heaves a sigh, and scrubs a hand over his face. “I know you’re worried about Sarada.”

When they were twelve, Sasuke would have blazed up at the accusation of being worried about anything, but they’re not twelve anymore, and Sarada is his daughter. When she was just born, he’d startled awake in bed sometimes, convinced that he was living a detailed and complicated genjutsu, and Sakura would wander blearily into the nursery to feed her and find Sasuke leaned against the wall by the crib. They’d talked, then, Sakura sleepy and Sasuke still disbelieving, about what they’d hoped -- Sakura about the strength of Sarada’s baby grip on her finger, Sasuke about the directness of her infant gaze. Hushed dreams.

“I haven’t been there for her,” he says instead of agreeing outright, and Naruto’s expression goes soft so obviously that it’s like Sasuke lit a flame over his face and melted it. 

“It’s obvious how much you love her,” he says, and Sasuke looks away in the face of such open honesty. “Sarada-chan knows that, Sasuke.”

His name always comes out of Naruto sounding like a whispered wish at this decibel, a low susurration of _esses_ closed by the hard consonant _ke_. He’d rather the yelling, but his name has always come out of Naruto in a way no one else duplicates.

“I thought,” he starts, shifting restlessly from one foot to the other. They’ve turned on a dime, something about the stifled quiet of the darkness carved out of the earth, the otherworldly illumination making the words spill more easily: “I thought it would be better for her if I weren’t here. You don’t know ...”

“How people look at you?” Naruto finishes, mouth curled up in a wry twist.

Sasuke looks at him then, the colours of the Naruto he’d known washed out by the light of the seal and faded by the time between them. He sees it in the mirror himself at times, a weathering at the edges about the way shinobi age, becoming less real as time goes on.

“It ended up never being the right time,” he says finally, and Naruto knows what he means because it’s been looming large between them for a decade and a half now. “After the war ...”

“Kakashi-sensei said that you needed to be the one who decided when,” Naruto says, and Sasuke stares at him. 

“Kakashi was the one who told me _not now_ when I first came back,” he says, blank.

“Yeah, and I wanted to know why,” Naruto says, hitching one foot back against the wall so he can lean more comfortably, their bodies containing the space between them like lanky brackets. “And he said: Have you ever known Sasuke to be stopped if he didn’t want to be?”

Sasuke realises he’s staring a moment late, drops his gaze to the half-smile slanted over Naruto’s mouth -- still wry, something mature about the expression that reminds him of Kakashi, so much that he is a little tempted to punch it off. He wants to say: _that shit jounin,_ because Kakashi has a way of making him feel stupid and helpless and like a new-minted genin again even in absentia and sometimes he just wants to let the frustrated child inside him react.

What he does say, instead, is: “I thought I wanted the truth to be told, more than anything else, but when Sarada was born, I ...”

He’d wanted her to be happy, above everything else. It had _hurt_ for days after Sakura had put the warm, squirming bundle of his daughter into his arms, exhaustion in the smile lingering around her green eyes. He’d walked around and periodically been unable to draw breath, thought about asking Sakura to give him a check-up once she was out of hospital, and then one day Sarada had looked at him with recognition in her clear dark eyes and he’d realized that it was love.

Love, tender in a way he’d never known before, and at once absolute and uncontainable. He didn’t understand then, still doesn’t understand now how it doesn’t expand out of his skin like learning how to tolerate the pain of Susano’o all over again. 

“She’s as smart as you and Sakura-chan put together,” Naruto’s saying. “The village will recognize her one day, one way or another.”

“And they’ll wait for her to go crazy like all the rest of us do,” Sasuke says, tasting the familiar bitterness at the back of his throat.

“The village has changed, Sasuke,” Naruto says, but there’s less of a challenge in his voice than a sincere attempt to convince. “It’s not perfect, but --”

“Do you think it’s changed enough?” Sasuke cuts him off, and Naruto goes quiet. “Tell me the truth _you_ believe, Naruto.”

There’s a long silence, their eyes locked, the seal-ward above them pulsing four, five, seven beats before Naruto answers: “The village will accept her. People will accept her, but it’ll be despite her name. She’ll be fighting against it all her life.”

Sasuke holds his gaze a moment longer, then breaks it. 

“I was,” he says, and then hesitates. “I was willing to give up everything for her. If letting Konoha keep all its secrets, letting the village system continue, not -- not being there to remind people of what happened meant Sarada could be happy ...”

“You know what being left alone is like,” Naruto says, and Sasuke flinches.

“Sakura’s with her.” 

“They’d both rather you were there and you know it,” Naruto continues, merciless. “For me, it was -- it didn’t matter so much if the village still hated me, if you and Sakura-chan and Kakashi-sensei didn’t. I could stop hating everything with that. I _did_ stop hating everything with that.”

“Sarada doesn’t hate the village,” Sasuke mutters, and Naruto knees his hip because the space is too small for it and they’ve both kicked each other’s ankles too many times for their combined age to be anything but embarrassing.

“You know what I mean,” Naruto says. “But it could be different for you, and for Sarada-chan.”

“There’s no guarantee people are going to accept anything I tell them,” Sasuke counters, and Naruto makes an impatient noise so he steamrolls whatever is coming with -- “It’s been this many years, why wouldn’t they think it was some kind of publicity stunt --”

“ _I’ll_ tell them it’s true,” Naruto rolls over him even more loudly, exasperated. “It’s not like there aren’t documents to prove it, Tsunade-baa-chan unsealed them after you killed Danzo and _she_ can back you up. Kakashi-sensei too.”

“Why would,” Sasuke starts, because it’s an old frustration, it’s a crowded bar and his brother’s name slurring out of drunken mouths like trash --

“You’re not alone anymore, Sasuke,” Naruto says, pinning him with a glare. “I thought you got that.”

“I _know_ ,” Sasuke snaps, but he can hear the grittiness of his own voice, the long-banked anger in it threatening to make it harsh. “I know, but Sarada and Sakura don’t deserve to be dragged through this with me.”

“Why don’t you ask Sakura-chan what she deserves,” Naruto suggests, the line of his mouth tight. “I bet you’ll find --”

“I think I’ll find that whatever she thinks sounds like you.”

“She and I agree because we actually _talk_ about things, unlike --” Naruto stops, looks like he wants to rewind his sentence and doesn’t at the same time before plowing on regardless: “Unlike you -- when was the last time you had a conversation with her about something other than Sarada’s grades?”

“You’re awfully involved in my relationship with my wife, Naruto.” Sasuke’s voice is low now, dangerous for it, but Naruto’s never given a damn about danger.

“You’re my teammates,” he’s growling, the raw edge of his voice giving away a life lived housing a demon. “Of course I --”

“ _Teammates_ ,” Sasuke sneers, and doesn’t bother tamping down the viciousness of: “Is _that_ what they call it these days?”

“What --” Naruto stops short, staring, face wiped blank of expression like the thought’s never occurred to him. In the awkward sudden stop of the conversation Sasuke regrets ever falling into talking to Naruto in an enclosed space in the first place, regrets not remembering how to shove the bitterness down further until the pettiness of it is only a distant ugliness. The pause stretches until Naruto finally breaks it, almost soft: “What are you saying?”

“Never mind,” Sasuke tries to make his voice forceful, lifts a hand to wave it off and sweep it away because it’s bad enough to think about uprooting the costly peace of the village without thinking about the price of his home, whatever it is. But Naruto catches his wrist and uses it to yank him closer without warning, Sasuke’s back leaving the wall of packed dirt for the first time since they landed.

“You don’t get to _never mind_ that,” Naruto snarls, in his face and in his space and close enough that even in the wavering light of the seals Sasuke can see the fine fan of smile lines at the corners of his eyes, the dig of age into the angles bracketing his mouth. “You don’t get to say something like that and -- you know we’d never do something like that to you!”

“You’ve always wanted Sakura,” Sasuke says finally, because there’s nowhere to go in this hole in the ground and it burns. Naruto and Sakura look at each other and they can understand each other’s looks now, familiar in a learned way Sasuke doesn’t have with either of them really, and he doesn’t -- he cut his place out of Konohagakure a long time ago, and it’s healed over. It is. He shouldn’t be picking at the scab, but: “Maybe you haven’t done anything yet, but --”

“We _wouldn’t_ ,” Naruto hisses forcefully, as if putting emphasis into his words will convince Sasuke, and Sasuke wishes it didn’t. “Even if you’re never home -- shit, half the time we talk about _you_ , what you’re doing and where you are -- like I’d _ever_ , you stupid damn asshole.”

And there it is, because that’s the truth of it; even after all these years and the space between them becoming something closed only with angry words and fists again, Sasuke doesn’t disbelieve him. _Like I’d ever,_ Naruto says, giving up on including even Sakura in it. 

_She doesn’t know me,_ he wants to say in return, but he knows as well as Naruto does that there’s only one answer Naruto is able to give. And Sasuke -- 

Sasuke doesn’t know her either.

“Also I’m married,” Naruto adds, an afterthought, and Hinata truly is Sasuke’s favourite person for being able to direct the conversation away from him even when she isn’t there. It doesn’t escape him that Hinata isn’t Naruto’s first, or even third reason to keep his vows. It’s not on him to visit Naruto’s personal life any more than it is to help Naruto find happiness; he can barely find his own. Sasuke is the least qualified person for Naruto to consider a confidant, which is naturally why he says next: “It’s -- it’s harder than I thought it would be. But I wouldn’t hurt Hinata or the kids for anything.”

“You were going to make her stay in the village instead of looking for your kid,” Sasuke points out, and Naruto’s ears go a red visible in the low light.

“I just thought --” he lets go of Sasuke’s wrist to run his fingers through the short scrub of his hair, frustrated. “She does such a better job with him -- with both of them, really, I just thought ... “ He pauses, hands grasping at the air as if looking for words.

“You thought you’d rescue him and fix that,” Sasuke finishes, and earns a punch to his arm for his troubles. The force of it is barely enough to hurt, which means he’s found a nerve that’s open but old, flayed raw and no longer feeling.

“I thought there’d be less stuff in the way of dealing with the Hyuuga,” Naruto says. “I didn’t know that when she agreed to marry me, it’d be going against her dad.”

“You didn’t think,” Sasuke says, but it’s tired and habitual and Naruto only shoots him a glare for it. “You thought you’d change over a hundred years of clan tradition just by marrying their heir?”

“Not _that_ easily,” Naruto mumbles, but Sasuke’s reminded again how much older he is when he adds: “Maybe a little. Instead Hinata’s always trying to get her say in the clan and their old fart elders can’t seem to decide if they’re going to let her take over or make Hanabi do it without actually making her head.”

Sasuke barely remembers what a Hanabi even is. It’s only the naming pattern that gives him the clue that there’s probably another Hyuuga sister, likely younger. That in itself might herald change, but he can imagine a panel of old fart elders more easily than he’d like. The one thing that seems to be consistent across civilian and shinobi society, country to county, is the tendency for there to be old fart elders in irritating concentration.

“Hyuuga won’t accept interference from an outsider anyway,” he says, mentally picturing the kind of information missive he’d be writing if the clan weren’t a member of Konoha. “You have an in through Hinata; use it.”

“I’m not going to _use_ my wife,” Naruto squawks, indignant, and Sasuke rolls his eyes so hard that he follows it with: “Anyway it -- Hinata agrees with my ideas, so --”

“What _doesn’t_ Hinata agree with?” Sasuke snorts, leaning his head back so that he can maximize the meagre two centimetre difference in their heights that Naruto has never been able to close. 

“Lots,” Naruto says. “Lots, like -- well --”

“Yeah,” Sasuke says, rolling his eyes again because he already gave into the urge once. “Must be hard having such a conflict-free home.”

“Shut up,” Naruto’s response is instinctive, almost thrown away in order to focus on Sasuke with a frown. “She’s just -- Hinata is _nice_ , alright?”

 _If nice is all you wanted, you wouldn’t be married to a clan heiress,_ Sasuke thinks, but doesn’t bother to say. Naruto punches his shoulder again in the same spot anyway; he’s going to bruise. 

“She _is_ ,” he insists. “And she’s great with the kids. Himawari worships her.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sasuke waves it off, notes again that Naruto doesn’t talk about himself when it comes to Hyuuga Hinata. He’s not entirely unaware that there’s a corpse living in the conversation here, but Sasuke hadn’t known Hyuuga Neji in life and hasn’t been informed to any level of detail about the man in death. Sakura had been vague about a promise Naruto had made about the Hyuuga, but Naruto has made so many promises over the years --

Some of which he’s kept, but Sasuke’s not keeping count.

Naruto has subsided into a pout when he glances back over, lower lip stubbornly jutted out like the undersocialized brat he still is under all the Hokage polish. His gaze is fixed on Sasuke, though, something in them that -- that Sasuke can’t quite interpret. He meets it for a beat and another before sighing and glaring upward like that might present him the solution to Uzumaki Naruto he’s been looking for since he’d walked away from Konoha for the first time.

There isn’t one. There won’t be one, and years ago Sasuke had thought perhaps the answer was something like prayer. He’s too old even for that now, too old not to understand that being able to put one foot ahead of the other is faith in itself.

“I know,” he says, clenching his hands into loose fists to avoid the urge to rub them over his face and groan. “I know, you’re living in your happy ending. I’m not going to --”

“No,” Naruto interrupts, but it’s not sharp. There’s something softer in it, compelling enough that Sasuke looks at him again, long enough to wish that those stupid eyes weren’t that luminous, ruinous blue.

“No?” He repeats when Naruto pauses as if he’s looking for words. Maybe the Hokage polish is more than skin deep, because he opens and closes his mouth a few times before he finally settles on the thought, spine pushing back into the dirt as he tilts a lopsided smile that is mostly rueful at Sasuke.

“No,” he says again. “It’s just -- whenever I thought about my happy ending, you were always in it.”

It’s so _Naruto_ that Sasuke doesn’t know how to react. He can feel his face go blank in surprise, identifies the part of that smile that isn’t about regret so much as hopeful, and his mouth works without any real thought: “Naruto, I --”

There’s a sudden rumble from above before he can continue, and then a massive thud as something lands squarely on the earth sitting on top of the seal barrier. A second passes before Sakura’s voice follows, threatening in tone but muffled out of comprehension, and in the next second they’re ducking and covering their eyes as dirt rains down around them. 

The dirt is accompanied by a person who is distinctly not either of their wives. Sasuke grabs for his sword at the same time he sees Naruto draw his hands together for a seal, but Sakura’s voice rings clear this time:

“He’s not a threat,” she calls down. “He’s breaking you out. Now get out of there.”

\--

 _Not a threat_ turns out to mean not so much that the terrified Grass-nin is friendly and more that he has promised not to leave the pit for the remainder of the mission, however long it should take. Whatever Sakura (or Hinata, or both) did to him makes Sasuke wonder if the guy will crawl out any time before next winter, but he’s the least of their worries.

“He had no idea who Sarada was,” Sakura says. “I had to describe her -- she’s definitely in their camp, but they don’t know whose daughter she is.”

“That’s ...” Good, on some levels, but on other levels, where Sasuke is aware of what exactly a kunoichi’s life is like and what risks they run, begs the question of: “Why did they kidnap her, then?”

“It seems to have been about opportunity,” Hinata breaks in, stepping away from where she appears to have been ascertaining that most of Naruto has been returned to her safely. “If Bolt hadn’t turned around when he did, he probably would have been the one taken.”

“Opportunity,” Naruto says slowly. “To kidnap children.”

“From what that guy said, there are more,” Sakura puts in as she releases Sasuke’s jaw, apparently satisfied with the size of his pupils. “The seal barrier they put you in is what they use to keep the kids contained, too.”

“Those seals aren’t child’s play,” Sasuke says with a frown, Sharingan spinning into place so he can look over the edge of the hole again. The seals have been broken, but he can still see the lingering complexity of them. “They’re using them to contain Academy-aged children?”

“That’s what he said,” Sakura confirms, and Sasuke is surprised when she meets his gaze with a short nod of determination. The sentiment is easy to read:

“Whatever they’re using them for, we’re putting an end to it,” Naruto’s drawn himself up into Hokage-posture. Even his shoulders are angry in an official sort of way. “Grass has been uncooperative with us before, but we’ve let it go. This is --”

“This is a rescue mission,” Hinata says, quiet voice authoritative. “He did not remember any children fitting Bolt’s description.”

Naruto’s momentum, arrested, flounders. “Then who -- ?”

“Karin will let me know as soon as she gets a bead on him,” Sasuke cuts him off. “For now, we focus.”

“Listen, asshole,” Naruto starts, but Sakura punches him in the shoulder: not one of her superstrength strikes, but something habitual and easy that stops his building steam and makes him look at her with something more hangdog than hurt. _We’d never do something like that to you,_ Naruto said, and Sasuke believes him.

He doesn’t know what to do with it.

“The guy said the camp isn’t far,” Sakura says as she leans down to scrape out a rough map with the tip of a kunai, gouging deeply into the dirt to make the lines visible in the rising moonlight. Sasuke crouches next to her, scanning the image and committing it to memory. “It’s a standard guard formation. Three-tiered, with two sets of prisoner-pits -- one set is probably a decoy.”

“We’ll need to split up again, then,” Sasuke realizes, frowning at the two locations she’s marked out for the prisoner-pits. Children-pits, if the rest of the captives are Sarada’s age.

When he’d been Sarada’s age, he hadn’t felt like a child, but looking at her now -- 

The anger is an easy thing to put away, a honed skill.

“You and Sasuke-san know Sarada-chan’s chakra the best, Sakura-san,” Hinata says, pale eyes gleaming when the moon strikes them. “If each of you takes a search area, we’ll have a better chance of finding her.”

If Sasuke really thinks about it, he supposes he can see her beauty on an abstract level, but -- in some ways, as Naruto’s wife, she reminds him too much of his own mother to imagine as a real person in her own right. It’s too easy to picture her with an apron and deft fingers over scraped knees. He can’t picture Naruto as Fugaku. He can’t see Sakura as Mikoto, either. Sasuke’s parents had been paragon shinobi, efficient and precise and subtle, and Naruto and Sakura …

“We’re not just here to rescue Sarada anymore,” Sakura says.

Naruto and Sakura have never been anyone else. 

“Any kids we find, we rescue,” Naruto agrees with a firm nod. Sasuke’s not sure if he imagines it, but he thinks there might be the ghost of a smile on Hinata’s expression when he glances back at her. He only has the space of a moment to look, because Naruto is overshooting himself and showing his lack of Shikamaru in the next moment: “So this should be a full-scale attack, and I can use clones to --”

“Shut up,” Sasuke says, standing wearily and sweeping his cloak back into place. He continues before Naruto can squawk his offence: “If you alert them to our presence, you’re telling them that they have an army of hostages at their disposal. We’ll infiltrate.”

\--

As it turns out, Sasuke isn’t wrong about the Grass-nin being desperate and ill-organized. They split into two groups, dividing the doujutsu between them to spot for chakra: Naruto with his bright hair covered under a raggedy hood trailing Hinata, Sakura with her own hood silent next to Sasuke. They take out a pair of enterprising guards early into the infiltration, young ones maybe at Chuunin-level.

Sakura knocks hers out with a pinch to the neck and Sasuke doesn’t miss the flash of her green eyes at him when he does the same.

There’s no room or time to talk, and he’s always thought that was a convenience, but Sarada’s absence takes shape between them almost more acutely than her presence.

 _Left_ , he signals her, the Sharingan picking up a low flare of chakra on her side of the field, and she steals away and returns a few moments later to beckon him onward. 

Past the crest of a low hill there are five more guards, gathered around a small fire dug deep into the ground and playing cards. Their voices aren’t pitched low enough for them to be feeling wary: clearly they haven’t been expecting attack. It’s a strange lack of care for cross-border kidnappers.

That’s of less concern than the pits with their faint chakra glows. From the dim light of the guards’ fire Sasuke can see at least a dozen, pocked into the hillside like bizarre overlarge warrens, ending finally at the edge of a small stream. It’s an ideal place for a camp, but it means the holes that the kids are in are likely uncomfortably damp.

 _Yes?_ Sakura mouths, indicating them with a tilt of her head. 

_Maybe,_ is all Sasuke can offer, hands twisting quickly into the wordless signal before he sets them onto his sword. The gleam of chakra could be the small signatures of small bodies with the seal barrier interfering or it could just be the barrier, but they’ll need to deal with the guards either way. In the starlight Sakura’s frown is obvious, but she nods unhappily after a moment, pointing at the two guards closest: she’ll take them out first, Sasuke gathers.

Sasuke nods acknowledgment in turn, chakra gathering in preparation, and the moment they both turn to move is the same moment that the stream suddenly burbles, rises, and resolves itself into a silver-haired man with an oversized sword that is swinging at the stunned Grass-nin before they can even begin to react. The water splashing with him douse the flames of the fire and leaves the place lit only by the night sky.

“ _Suigetsu_ ,” Sasuke hisses in a burst of annoyance, flickering out of his and Sakura’s hiding spot and grabbing two of the Grass-nin as they try to make a break for it -- he gives them both a shake without breaking his own momentum, jostling them enough to throw them off, and then tosses them behind him where Sakura is already there to catch and smash their heads together. “Leave them alive!”

“Sasuke?” Suigetsu stops in the middle of slashing at a Grass-nin chest, torso going liquid as the ninja tries to retaliate by stabbing him in the gut. A rock flies at the woman’s head in the next minute, thudding home with a crack.

“I _told_ you Sasuke and his people were going to be here,” Karin’s huffy voice comes as she appears in turn, dusting her hands off. “Do you _ever_ listen to anything I say --”

“Why would I bother when most of it is pointless?” Suigetsu asks, letting his head splash as Karin socks him. The whole tableau has the air of a pattern so entrenched it’s practically for show; Sasuke has to resist the teenage urge to roll his eyes. Sakura has drawn level with Sasuke by this point, both of them throwing kunai handle-first to incapacitate the remaining Grass-nin trying to sneak off while they’re distracted.

“Yeah,” Karin crows half-heartedly as something of an afterthought, addressing the unconscious nin as if they’re likely to hear her. Sasuke restrains a sigh as he releases a length of chakra-loaded wire, binding the bunch of unconscious nin together. “You’re not ready for Sasuke in a million years, losers.”

“Neither are you,” Suigetsu puts in, right as Sasuke demands (ignoring their bickering with tired experience):

“What are you doing here?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be tracking Bolt?” Sakura appends, eyes narrowed at both of them, the unity of their movements unsyncing as she folds her arms. 

“We are,” Karin sniffs, shaking the extra moisture off her hand as Suigetsu reforms his head. “His chakra is here. Kouji went home once I had a lock on him,” she adds to Sasuke. “He said he’d ask around for any night-flying summons, but that kid is definitely here.”

“ _Here_ , here?” Sakura asks, folding her arms. “The guy we interrogated said they don’t have anyone matching his description.”

“Well, unless you’ve got surprise Uzumaki chakra inside you, he’s here,” Karin retorts, folding her arms in turn and missing the way Sasuke’s shoulders tense despite himself.

Sakura doesn’t miss it.

“We’ll look,” Sasuke says, before she can say anything. “There are seal barriers in each of those,” he gestures at the pits in the hillside. “You just need to break three of the eight paper seals, but don’t fall on the kids inside.”

“The way you talk, you’d think you didn’t know we don’t actually need to answer to you anymore,” Suigetsu comments, holstering his latest too-large sword and heading to the closest pit.

“You’re too dumb to have the right not to answer to someone,” Karin snaps at him, though he ducks out of the way before she can actually take another swing at him. “-- by the way, Sasuke, Juugo says hi, but you know how he is with these ... kids, kidnapping, you know.”

Sasuke waves it off with a dip of his head, glancing through the movement at Sakura, fallen silent at his side. He lets Karin and Suigetsu drop into the closest holes before he offers, “I’ll start at the other end.”

“They seem happy,” is what Sakura says instead of responding to his words, and when she looks at him her eyes are too bright, throwing him for a loop. “Is that what you’re like when you’re not at home, too?”

“I --” 

“I’ll take the opposite end,” she cuts him off, and she’s gone before he can complete the thought.

Karin is lifting a small boy out of the pit in the ground when Sasuke passes her to start on the holes highest up. The child is no older than Sarada at first glance, but his clothes are threadbare despite being relatively neat, and he’s -- he’s unpleasantly compliant in Karin’s hands, quietly sitting when she sets him down and tells him not to move just yet.

There’s a look in the kid’s eyes that Sasuke recognizes.

“Lighter than a cat,” Suigetsu’s voice comes from behind him, and Sasuke glances over his shoulder to see a girl emerging from the hole, dressed similarly in drably well-tended clothing. As she looks up over the edge and spots the boy Karin found her eyes widen and a shout tears from her mouth. Before Suigetsu can lever himself out she’s scrambled clumsily to her hands and knees and rushed Karin, one hand clutched into a fist that is caught with a startled --

“Whoa!” Karin catches the other fist. “Calm down, we’re _rescuing_ you, you --” She gets a kick to the shin as she tries to pin the struggling arms to the girl’s sides and grunts, annoyance in her face.

“Oi, oi, don’t get killed by a kid before I can kill you,” Suigetsu calls from where he’s clearly abandoned Karin to her fate and started for another pit; the first boy to emerge still hasn’t reacted to anything, but he flinches when Karin finally manages to disengage the furious child and forcibly plunk her down to sit next to him.

“Listen, you little brat,” she growls, probably looking more ferocious than necessary. “That guy over there is the very angry dad of a little girl here and --”

“Karin, just let her be,” Sasuke says, or starts to say because childish voices are ringing out from some of the other pits by now, mingled tones of fear and anger. Suigetsu is emerging from his second rescue with his shoulder liquid where a boy is biting ferociously at it and Sakura at the other end of the field appears to have had marginally more success at convincing her charge not to attack, though the girl she’s holding looks extremely dubious.

“Man, these --” Suigetsu starts, but Sasuke isn’t listening. He thought he’d heard --

He sees Sakura freeze at the same time it sounds a second time, their heads whipping in the same direction. The third time it’s clear, Sarada’s voice high and as frightened as she sounds hopeful: _Papa?_ , muffled through a seal barrier.

Sasuke doesn’t actually remember moving. He’s not even sure if he used the Rinnegan or not, but he’s standing on a seal barrier before he’s registered it, sword sweeping through the first three paper seals he can identify as Sarada’s face lights up through the barrier’s hazy chakra gleam. She’s in his arms before his feet even hit the ground, leapt up like a monkey, and he drops his sword to catch her. 

“I thought I heard you,” she says, muffled, face buried into his shoulder, and Sasuke reaches up to tug her glasses off so the frames don’t end up digging into her face. “But I wasn’t sure until I heard Karin-san --” She breaks off to gulp and sniffle and Sasuke murmurs a purely instinctive _shhh_ , pocketing her glasses so he can stroke her hair with his free hand, calm the pounding of his own blood through his chest.

“I’ve got you,” he says, and she shifts in his hold until she can scrub at her eyes with an angry swipe, real and warm and already a little blotchy from tears the way Uchiha skin goes.

“I _said_ you’d be here,” she hisses. “Stupid Bolt kept saying _he_ was going to save us somehow --”

“Bolt?” Sasuke asks, startled, and looks down for the first time see that indeed, Naruto’s eldest is on the ground at his feet, apparently unconscious, so quiet and small in the cramped space that he hadn’t even noticed. His heart stills, but he keeps one hand in Sarada’s as he sets her down to kneel by the boy, searching for a pulse. “-- what’s wrong with him?” 

“Nothing,” Sarada says, sounding evasive enough that Sasuke stares at her once he’s found the heartbeat, still strong and steady. “Nothing! He just hit his head. When they dropped him in here.”

There’s more to this story, but Sasuke can’t be bothered to dig it out just now. 

“Sarada?” Sakura’s voice calls down from above, and they look up to see her haloed in the moonlight. Even backlit Sasuke can tell she’d be jumping in if there were any room for four.

“I’m okay, Mama,” Sarada shouts back, though she’s holding onto Sasuke with both hands now.

“Thank goodness,” Sakura says, and her voice breaks for the first time. “Thank goodness -- Sasuke --”

“I’m bringing her to you,” he answers, and watches her scrub a hand across her eyes in the same gesture as Sarada’s before leaning out of the way.

She’s trained her voice down to something approximating her usual calm competence when Sasuke lands on the ground next to her, Sarada holding on around his neck and Bolt slung over his shoulder. “What happened to Bolt, Sarada?”

“He hit his head,” Sarada repeats, voice still deliberately vague around it even as Sasuke lays the boy down.

“He seems okay,” Sakura’s muttering, green chakra buzzing around her hands in a quick exam before she turns to Sarada. “You’re _sure_ you’re alright, Sarada? Nothing hurts?”

“No, Mama,” Sarada says, swatting a little at the still-glowing hands hovering around her face in a way that makes Sakura give a slightly watery smile and tug at a strand of dark hair before tucking her arms against her sides. Sasuke steps in closer, a wordless compromise between handing their daughter over to Sakura and keeping a hold on her himself.

“No one hurt you?” He asks, and she shakes her head.

“Only when they first caught me,” she says, managing to sound angrier about being caught than being manhandled by the kind of people who would kidnap children. “I’m just hungry, and --”

“And?” Sakura presses.

“And,” she hesitates again, then directs a furious glare down at the unconscious Bolt. “And I knew _the whole time_ that you were going to come for me. You and Mama both.”

The repetition is enough to give Sasuke pause. Sakura’s eyes meet his over Sarada’s shoulder, and before he can watch them turn accusing he takes a deep breath and sets Sarada down, kneeling in front of her so they’re at eye-level.

“Sarada, I’m always going to come when you need me,” he says, because this has been questioned too many times in the last twenty-four hours for him not to address it with the person who needs to hear it the most. 

“I know that,” she mutters, not meeting his eyes. There’s a powerful pout on her face that looks vaguely familiar in a way Sasuke can’t place, and he puts a hand on her shoulder and waits until she finally looks at him again.

“You’re my daughter,” he says, keeping his voice low enough that they can pretend this conversation is between the two of them, for all that Sakura is right next to them and he can sense Karin and Suigetsu’s chakra signals approaching with a half-dozen miniature ones. Sarada’s pout grows in intensity, and before she can get too Academy-age embarrassed to listen he says: “Nothing will keep me from you if you need me.”

It stops whatever she was going to say, and he thinks: _Is it so hard to believe?_

“Not fire nor flood,” he says, and sets her glasses back onto her nose. She reaches up to adjust them properly in unconscious habit, blinking at him through the lens, and he brushes some of her bangs away from her forehead. “Alright?”

It takes a moment before she finally huffs and looks away again, but Sasuke can see the curl of her mouth despite her set shoulders. “You’re embarrassing, Papa.”

“I agree,” Sakura’s voice says, accompanied by Sakura dropping into a crouch by them so she can grin at Sarada as if she’s sharing a secret; to Sasuke’s consternation, his daughter grins back in the same way right up until her mother reaches out to straighten her collar and she’s obliged to emit a longsuffering _Mama_. 

He can understand Sakura: all he wants is to hold on to Sarada and never let her go again. Sakura’s trying to rub dirt off the hem of Sarada’s sweater despite her protests that everything is fine and Sasuke thinks --

“Bolt!” Sasuke thinks he needs to send a card to Hyuuga Hinata, because the woman impeccably saves him from having to think. He and Sakura draw closer to Sarada on instinct as Naruto cheats across the distance with the Hiraishin, three-pronged kunai thudding into place by Sasuke’s foot followed by the flurry of wind that marks his reappearance. 

“What’s wrong with him?!” He demands before he’s even quite landed on the ground again, crashing down to the ground to immediately to reach for his son’s neck, feeling for a pulse. 

“Sarada says he hit his head,” Sakura gives Sarada’s collar a last reluctant tug before leaving them to kneel by Naruto’s side. “I didn’t sense any damage that means we can’t just wake him up.”

“Are you sure, Sakura-chan?” Naruto’s stare is pleading, blue-eyed vulnerability in a face made pale by worry and moonlight, and Sasuke will never admit that one of the things that impresses him about Sakura is her utter immunity to any such expression. Not that Sasuke isn’t: but he’s _annoyed_ , always.

“Who’s the med-nin here?” She elbows him out of the way, not as roughly as she could have.

“You,” Naruto says, meekly, but keeps a hand on his son’s shoulder as Sakura passes buzzing green chakra over Bolt’s head, carefully lifting him to get at the back of it. Hinata hovers at Naruto’s back, blocked out of the immediate proceedings by Naruto and Sakura’s inward-turned bodies but clearly watching with the Byakugan activated.

Sarada’s small hand slips into Sasuke’s right as Sakura lowers the boy to the ground again, satisfied with the results of the second examination, and he looks down to see his daughter’s gaze trained on Naruto’s son, one corner of her lip bitten in consternation. It’s another of Sakura’s gestures, another piece of evidence that links her to Sakura’s hand. 

_I’m the only one raising her,_ Sasuke remembers Sakura saying, and bends a little so that he can say, voice quiet for her benefit: “What is it?”

“He’s going to be okay, right?” Sarada asks, glancing at Bolt again before looking up at him. “Because -- he’s really annoying, but he should still be okay.”

It is deeply unsurprising that Naruto’s progeny is really annoying, but Sasuke gets the point. He squeezes her hand a little and tilts his head to indicate Sakura: “Your mother has reattached arms before. She can handle a hit to the head.”

“Oh,” Sarada says, eyes growing round with surprise. Sasuke wonders why Sakura wouldn’t have explained this to their daughter already, even as Sarada asks: “Yours and Hokage-sama’s?”

“Both of ours, yes,” he confirms, and lifts his left arm so that the cloak falls away, exposing the bandaged but functional length of it. “That’s why --”

Bolt sits up abruptly, making Sasuke startle out of his sentence and take a half-step in front of Sarada on instinct. Sarada, of course, darts out from behind him for a better view, though she keeps a grip on his hand.

“Wh ...” Bolt blinks a few times, then blanches. “Dad?! What are you doing here?!”

“You’re such a brat,” Naruto says -- “A _brat_ ,” he yells it, a little, and then grabs Bolt to him in a crushing hug that can’t possibly be comfortable for either of them. Bolt’s arms flail a few times before he seems to figure out what is happening and clutches onto Naruto’s coat instead, small shoulders hunching into his father’s chest.

“Of course we’re here,” Hinata says softly, crouching down to stroke a hand over her son’s bright hair. Bolt gives a tremendous, snot-filled sniffle and releases one hand from its death-grip on Naruto to reach out for his mother’s hand instead, Hinata taking it and stroking over his knuckles. 

Sasuke can make out the small voice stuttering _I'm sorry, I messed up again_ in between shudders, followed immediately by Naruto's fervent, furious: "I don't care about anything except that _you're safe_."

“ _I_ knew they were coming,” Sarada announces from where she’s still holding Sasuke’s hand, giving a superior sniff. “The whole time. So take _that_.”

“ _Sarada_ ,” Sakura says, looking like she wants to be exasperated but is still too relieved at finding her at all to really manage it. The look on Sakura’s face and the determined condescension on Sarada’s -- and the relief, the shared relief palpable in the air here -- is enough that Sasuke has to let go of a laugh, reach down and swing his daughter up onto his hip to knock his forehead against her temple, grinning for her.

“Of course you did,” he says, remembering that she’s too old just before he’s tempted to add _clever girl_ as if she’s a toddler again, and Sarada just puffs out her cheeks and goes: “ _Hmph_.” 

But she doesn’t ask to be put down.

When Sasuke glances back over, Bolt’s head has popped up from Naruto’s shoulder, expression thunderous and mouth set in an angry line. Naruto is looking at him too, but there’s something in his face that Sasuke can’t place: something that Sasuke is certain Naruto has no reason to look at him with given the last twenty years of their lives. Bolt gives another prodigious sniffle before Sasuke can ask the moron why he looks so much more moronic than usual, and then he opens his mouth, obviously gathering air into his lungs in preparation to yell.

“We are all,” Hinata says, neatly slapping a hand over her eldest’s mouth and deflating him instantly. “Glad and grateful that both of you are safe and sound.”

“And we’ll talk about just why you wound up here in the first place later,” Sakura puts in, in a tone of voice that makes Sarada shift uncomfortably in Sasuke’s hold and suddenly find something very interesting to look at over his shoulder. Though -- over his shoulder, actually --

“This is very touching or whatever,” Suigetsu’s voice floats in as if on cue. “But what are you gonna do with these?”

He’s standing with Karin, both of them looking thoroughly discomfited by the fact that they're flanked by at least a dozen children in varying levels of neat but worn clothing. Some of them are holding onto each other, wide-eyed and apprehensive, and some are simply standing as if that was where they were placed. At least one is firmly latched onto Suigetsu’s pant leg, apparently having decided that that (for some reason) is the safest spot to be for the time being. Suigetsu looks so alarmed by this that Sasuke has to stifle a smirk.

“None of them really talked,” Sarada whispers, one hand caught into Sasuke’s cloak again. “I only saw them for a little while -- just when I woke up when they first brought me here.”

“We won’t hurt you.” Hinata has moved beyond her husband and son, smiling that particular smile some women have that Sasuke can only really identify as _motherly_. She crouches, dropping her pale eyes to the level of the bravest of the children -- the girl who had rushed Karin earlier and who still glares more than looks back at her, suspicious. “Where are you from?”

“Here,” the girl mutters, after a glance left and right to see if any of the others are planning to speak. “An’ around.”

“How long have you been here?” Hinata asks, and it’s definitely for the best that she’s taken the lead here: the children are edging in a little closer as she speaks.

“Couple weeks, maybe,” the unofficial spokesperson answers, twisting a hand into the hem of her own shirt and tugging, now: shy after all. “Some of us not as long. They bought us in groups.”

Bought, Sasuke thinks, and some gone for weeks without any outcry; his and Naruto’s eyes meet in understanding even as Sakura leans down to match Hinata and asks: “Where’s your home? I’m sure we can take the time to return you.”

“What’s it matter to you?” The girl flares up, defiant suddenly, and Sasuke moves to touch Sakura’s shoulder. It’s just a moment of contact, his hand resting for a second at most, but she jumps a little and looks at him in surprise.

“Konoha first,” he says, and Sakura blinks -- starts to frown before Naruto interjects as well, voice bright.

“Which of you has ever ridden on a giant toad?” There’s brittleness in that brightness, Sasuke can see that much, but the children seem to be more distracted by the notion of giant animals. (There’s no question about summoning the snakes for this, though. The goal is to _avoid_ traumatizing children.)

“Wait, Naruto, what about --” Sakura starts, turning, and Sasuke puts a hand on her arm again -- it seems to be enough to surprise her into staring at him each time. That rare after all. Sarada looks back and forth between them, clearly confused.

“Grass has been unstable for a while,” he says, willing her to understand without needing the words spelled out. “Their ninja village hasn’t gotten missions in a long time.”

It takes a moment before her eyes widen. “But -- their own --”

He lets her go with a shake of his head in the direction of the kids, and she falls silent, though there’s anger in the tight line of her mouth. She inhales before she squares her shoulders and turns back to the children with a smile, clapping her hands together.

“Well then! I know which of the toads is nicest,” she announces. Sasuke wouldn’t be surprised if she really did. “But some of them are almost as smelly and silly as Naruto, so which of you want to come with me on my pick?”

“As smelly as --” Naruto repeats, then squeaks at a pitch that really shouldn’t be reachable for a man his age: “Sakura-chan! You can’t embarrass me outside of the village!”

“Yes, she can,” Sasuke raises an eyebrow at him. “But you do it yourself just fine.”

“Sasuke-bast--” Naruto starts, remembers that they’re surrounded by Academy-aged kids, and cuts himself off, settling for shaking a fist at him as best he can when his other arm is still wrapped around Bolt. “-jerk! Don’t think I won’t kick your a-- butt from here all the way back to Konoha just cause your daughter is watching!”

Some of the assembled children giggle behind their hands at the overexaggerated threat, which is what Sasuke was going for, so he lets Sakura work on distracting them further and ignores Naruto to set Sarada down again, bracing himself on one knee so he can look into her face. 

“I need you to help your mother,” he says carefully, watching her reaction. He keeps his voice low, well under the range of Sakura’s describing the toads and the rush of Naruto’s chakra trying to be subtle as he summons them. “Not all of those kids trust us because we’re adults, but they might trust you.”

“But I don’t know them,” Sarada protests, one hand still wound into the fabric of his cloak. “I’m not --”

“You’re a kunoichi-in-training of Konoha,” Sasuke says, because it’s true, because that’s the path he set her on and that’s the path she’ll walk until she wants another. And until she does -- but that’s a thought for later, for when they’re home and she’s safe. “Information-gathering is something you are trained in, right?”

“Yeah,” she says, sullenly twisting his collar a few times before reluctantly letting go.

“I know you’re still scared,” he starts, and she cuts him off with a flush --

“I’m _not_!”

“And it’s okay to be,” he continues, which makes her stop and blink at him, owlish behind the thick frames of her glasses. It’s something he should have expressed to her sooner, and more often, he thinks, but there are so many _should haves_ in the misguided trails of his life that he’s given up keeping track of them. There’s only _now_ ; there’s only ever really been _now_ and what he can do about it. “But I’m going to go talk to the people who took you captive, and I need you to be brave and talk to the kids.”

Sarada looks at him a moment longer, uncertain, before setting her mouth in a thin line of determination and nodding, and there’s so much of her that is Sakura that it throws Sasuke off-guard, sometimes, to look at her and see his own dark eyes instead of green. She lets go of his cloak when he nods back, and her voice steady: “Alright, Papa.”

“Alright,” he says, straightening back up and tucking a stray strand of her hair behind one small ear. He waits until she’s gone to Sakura’s side before he lets his face fall into impassiveness again, turning to make his way to the Grass-nin now feebly struggling against the wires. 

He’s not surprised when Naruto’s chakra surges up behind him. There’s already a row of juvenile toads -- which for Naruto’s summons means shed-sized -- sassing the children to make them laugh, carefully tucking weaponry into harmless spots along their warty bodies to make themselves safer spots for travel. 

“You’re gonna question them?” Naruto asks when he’s caught up, shoulder-to-shoulder with Sasuke as they approach the bound group.

“I’ll ask them how they got Bolt as well,” Sasuke answers, and he doesn’t even mean it to be a snide comment, but Naruto’s cheeks turn a dull red anyway.

“Listen,” he says, and Sasuke raises a hand because he doesn’t want to deal with this -- “No, _shut up_ , listen --”

“I’m not saying anything,” Sasuke points out, and Naruto makes a frustrated noise and grabs him by the arm. It’s his left arm, just above the join of the prosthetic that he’d only accepted because Sakura had asked him to as a wedding present. Naruto is the only one who doesn’t take care around his left side, but maybe it’s because Sasuke yanks himself free with no particular concern for _his_ right.

“ _I am_ ,” Naruto snaps, both of them paused on the slope of the hill. “I want to apologize, alright, you stupid bastard. Some of the shit I said was out of line.”

“Which shit?” Sasuke asks, just to be one, but when Naruto opens his mouth with a glare he interrupts whatever is coming out with: “I know you were trying.”

“... what?” Naruto stares, blank.

“I know you were trying to find Sarada,” Sasuke says -- huffs, really, because this kind of conversation isn’t the kind he likes to have, inasmuch as he likes to have conversations at all. He repeats it, just to make his point clear. “That _you_ were, at least.”

Naruto manages to look at once gratified and annoyed, which is something only an expressive face like his could pull off with any degree of success, and punches Sasuke’s left arm with a degree of pressure that says _Obviously, you ass_ more than his words do. “I’m gonna make you believe in Konoha again someday, you know.”

“I’ll decide that,” Sasuke says, and before the talk can get any deeper he indicates the Grass-nin with a sharp tilt of his head. “Now let’s figure out what these lowlifes want with children.”

\--

It turns out that Bolt was captured on his way to the border via _bat summons_ , which fact makes Sasuke summon Kouji specifically so that Karin will have someone to sulk with instead of repeatedly turning her miserable eyes on him for pity. His departure from Konoha was indeed sold through the civilian city, something that makes Naruto’s jaw go tight and Sakura’s expression darken, but he’s the only one who was specifically targeted, brought to the pits after the first man Sakura and Hinata interrogated had switched to perimetre duty. The rest of the children are snatched opportunities like Sarada, or sold directly to the Grass-nin for disquietingly impressive sums.

Naruto is angry and self-righteous all the way up until they ask why trained shinobi have turned into child traffickers. He gets spit on, then.

“Don’t pretend Konoha gives a damn,” the Grass-nin they’re questioning says, mouth curled in hard, angry lines. “None of the big villages will ever give a damn. You assholes all agree to work together and the rest of us get shut out, and you’re telling me you want to believe we don’t know?”

“That’s not --” Naruto says, somewhere between stunned and furious. “We’re trying to create peace! If Grass had agreed to the same terms --”

“ _Fuck_ your terms,” the Grass-nin says, and Sasuke yanks his head back another inch just in case he tries to get another wad of spit out. “Non-aggression, non-compete, you think we’re stupid because we weren’t a big village? Konoha broke us. Your brat wouldn’t have brought us a dime more than what we’ve been owed.”

“You’re owed nothing once you start selling children,” Sakura cuts in, having stepped away from where Hinata, Bolt, and Sarada are encouraging the hesitant captives on board their warty transportation. “Nothing justifies --”

“You watch your pretty daughter starve, then you come back and talk to me,” the Grass-nin sneers, and Sakura’s spine goes stiff. Sasuke narrowly shoves away the urge to simply snap the man’s neck and have done with it, reminds himself that there are a lot of reasons he doesn’t kill if at all avoidable. He looks at Naruto, the set line of his mouth, and waits to be surprised. 

It’s not often he’s not surprised once they’re in a tight spot. It just took until now to remember.

“You have grievances against me, you address them with me,” Naruto starts, only to be interrupted with --

“You think we’ll buy that? That you’ll listen --”

“ _I will listen_ ,” Naruto growls, a low rumble that should be menacing with his height and the breadth of his shoulders. Instead the man he’s talking to quietens, gaze dropping after a moment of eye contact, defeat in the slope of his body. And when Naruto speaks again, it’s almost gentle. This is how he wins over children and Kages and would-be masters of the universe, Sasuke thinks; it’s nearly criminal. “You took it out on kids without families instead. I promise you I have more power to do something than they do. For you _or_ against you.”

Sasuke releases the man’s hair and his head falls, the anger straightening his spine evaporating into the cool night air. He knows that posture. He knows how it feels.

So he says to the back of the Grass-nin’s head, mostly to the knot of the man’s forehead protector: “Only the lowest of the low would take advantage of kids.” 

Then he reaches up and knocks the protector off completely, tossing it plate-up into the man’s lap, the startled blink of their prisoner’s eyes reflected in the metal. “What are you,” he starts, head lifting, but Sasuke forces his head back down to stare at the three etched blades of grass.

“You’re wearing this symbol,” he says. “If you’re going to keep wearing it, you decide what it means.”

He lets go after that, because he knows that that’s all they’re going to get here, but when he looks up both Naruto and Sakura are staring at him. Too much time has passed and Sasuke has gotten too old not to know why. It’s been years since he wore a Konoha leaf on him anywhere, years since he’d even admitted to knowing where his old forehead protector has gone.

(It’s in a hidden pocket in his bag, dinged by travel, warmed through by being next to his body. He used to take it out and turn it over, trace a finger over the gash in it -- Naruto’s childish pleas, his real desperation, _every bone in your body_. There are times when Sasuke feels like every bone in his body really was broken at some point, like he’s still discovering things that need to be healed at thirty, like he’ll still be finding fractures at forty, fifty, on his deathbed.)

“We’re done here,” he says, instead of acknowledging those expressions. “Let’s go home.”

Naruto finds him in the last leg of the trip, leaping easily from the back of one toad to Sasuke’s. The kids on Naruto’s toad are ensconced in the fabric of the summons’ vest, wrapped up soundly and apparently fast asleep. Bolt is with Hinata, and from the looks of it he’s just as knocked out.

Sarada is leaned up against Sasuke’s side, partially under his cloak and stubbornly, sleepily blinking at the forest blurring past. She’s not even a genin, but Sasuke can tell that her skills of observation will be strong; as the trees get taller, approaching the gargantuan size of those around Konoha, she relaxes further. 

He’s musing on this when Naruto lands, and he shoots the idiot a glare for possibly disturbing Sarada (he doesn’t).

“You were right,” Naruto says without preamble, which is enough to stop whatever Sasuke was going to say dead in its tracks. He looks left and right for the possibility of a hidden camera, then glances over at Sakura on her toad in case she’s trying to pass along the message that Naruto has been replaced by a fake. “Stop that, you asshole! I’m not kidding.”

“Right about what?” Sasuke asks, tone dubious even as he punches Naruto for bad language in front of his daughter.

“Grass,” Naruto snarls without missing a beat, though it peters out in the end into a sigh. “They were still incorporated last year, when we decided to cut off diplomatic relations. Maybe if I’d --”

“Maybe if you’d listened to me, they would still be a village and not a child trafficking ring,” Sasuke finishes, and Naruto winces. “Or they’d just have deteriorated more slowly. Cutting them off and doing nothing just made it faster.”

“It would have given us time, and maybe they’d’ve asked for help instead of selling off who knows how many kids,” Naruto flares, for all that he’d apparently come over to concede a point. “Shut up, bas- _Sasuke_ , I know when I’m wrong and I can say it, okay?”

Sasuke raises an eyebrow.

“I’m a grown up,” Naruto says. “And I can admit when someone else has a better idea. But your stupid face still p- annoys me.”

Sasuke doesn’t kick him for continuing to almost swear in front of children, but he does say: “Then go back to your own toad.”

“They’re all my toads,” Naruto snaps, but his mouth is all soft and his eyes are all blue even in the moonlight. “Anyway, the ones I had are asleep, and I think Bolt is too.”

“Sarada was trying,” Sasuke points out, which earns him a mumbled _no I wasn’t_. 

“She should be,” Sakura says, landing soundlessly in her turn. She shoulders in next to Naruto, but between the two of them this time. Sasuke knows that it’s probably because it means she can put a hand on Sarada’s head and stroke her hair back fondly, but she sends him a look that is as warm as they’ve shared in a while. 

“ _Mama_ ,” Sarada whines (even Sasuke isn’t charitable enough to call it anything else). Sakura shushes her and picks up a pattern, combing slowly through her hair, murmuring low reassurances in response to their daughter’s occasional protest.

Sakura had drawn a kunai on him a month into their marriage when he’d bolted awake at two in the morning, every nerve pinging primal terror and Sharingan going haywire from a nightmare. He’d thought, with so much time between him and the past and a body he trusted in bed with him, that they’d stop. That he’d have some kind of control over them, from the full-blown nightmares to the incoherent terrors, the ones that made him dangerous when unconscious and left him tasting copper in his throat. The gleam of moonlight off the weapon had made him attack before he’d even been awake.

She’d broken his wrist on instinct that night, healed it after the pain brought him back to himself, and then lay quietly with him while he was too embarrassed to talk, stroking a hand through his hair until he finally fell asleep. 

It’s a memory that he’d thought was faded, but he drops his gaze to the mesmerizing repeat of movement and remembers.

“What were you two talking about?” Sakura asks, voice still low as she glances between the two of them. “You looked like you were going to get into a slapfight.”

“A what,” Sasuke says at the same time Naruto says, scandalized, “We don’t have _slapfights_ , Sakura-chan, we’re _elite ninja_.”

“Whatever you want to call it,” she says, but the side of her mouth Sasuke can see is curled up in amusement, and he thinks -- maybe he should just let her go, let this go, Sarada will be happier with a happier mother than --

“We were talking about Grass,” Naruto says, and Sasuke refocuses. 

“Ah,” Sakura sobers, and scoots seemingly unconsciously so that she’s closer to Sarada. “What are you going to do with them?”

“This isn’t all of them,” Naruto says, frowning in the direction of the prisoners tied to the back of Sasuke’s toad. “They wouldn’t say how many are involved in this, but then who knows how many more are willing to hide them or help them indirectly?”

“Squeeze all the information you can out of them while you can,” Sasuke advises. “I’ve been to Grass before. Rumours spread like wildfire in a country that small; you won’t know what’s real and what’s not by the time forty-eight hours has passed.”

Naruto’s mouth makes an unhappy line that Sasuke fully expected. He can’t imagine Naruto being happy with torture or the information obtained from it; someone other than Ibiki must run T&I these days, but Sasuke isn’t actually sure who it is. He knows more about other villages than he does about Konoha these days.

“You can’t just try to shut them down,” Sakura interjects, frowning. “That’s not what you’re suggesting, is it?”

“At this point?” Sasuke starts, but Sakura puts a hand on his arm and looks at him -- really _looks_ at him, a demand in her eyes. The colour of them is deepened by the night around them, the only light from stars and a fingernail moon. 

“You said yourself that Konoha could have helped with aid,” she says, and Naruto glances between them as if he can’t decide whether he’s constipated or legitimately trying to stay quiet. “Didn’t you?”

“That was nearly a year ago,” Sasuke stares at her, impatient, but doesn’t shake her off, if only because Sarada’s blinks are getting longer and more languid with the brush of her mother’s chakra so near by. “If the village is dissolved and they’re commonplace criminals now --”

“Commonplace criminals with advanced seal techniques,” Sakura points out, and Sasuke can feel his own mouth tighten. It’s a point, and he’s still trying to work it out himself. “We’re always in need of seal experts in the village, Naruto. Can’t you do something to ally with what’s left of them?”

“I’m not sure,” Naruto says glumly. “That’s something that would need Council approval.”

“Not if you offer it under duress,” Sakura says, looking smug -- and well-deserved, given how they both turn to stare openly at her. “What? Sarada’s away at the Academy most of the day now, so when I’m not working on the hospital merger there’s not a lot to do.”

“So you read Konoha’s statutes,” Sasuke says, very dryly, because he’s not even surprised. He also won’t be surprised if Naruto proceeds to ask:

“What do you mean, under duress?”

Without even looking, Sasuke reaches around Sarada and Sakura and cuffs the idiot on the back of the head, earning a squawk that Naruto only half-manages to stifle before Sakura is slapping the back of her hand over his mouth in turn. They all look down at Sarada apprehensively, but she only frowns a little and turns her face into Sasuke’s shirt with a muffled _hmmph_.

“What was that for, you rude jerkface,” Naruto hisses, not even rubbing at the spot Sasuke hit him and clearly regressing years in insults to match the average age of the group. 

“For not knowing how your own government works, you waste of a Hokage,” he hisses back. “ _Under duress_ means you present it to the Council with the belief that not making that move will lead to war.”

“War --” Naruto blinks, first at him, then Sakura. “There’s no way Grass can go to war with us. You saw them today.”

“Your Council doesn’t know that, you giant dummy,” Sakura points out, evidently suffering from the same insult age-regression as Naruto. “Right, Sasuke?”

“Our information networks intersect,” Sasuke says, keeping his voice very low. “I only knew about the deterioration of the village because Juugo passes through here regularly. Even I didn’t know what they were actually doing. There’s no way your elders know more than me.”

“Your ego gets ten times bigger every time I see you,” Naruto mutters, but if Sasuke knows him at all that’s something akin to delight on his face. He’s just been called an idiot and given only partially-solicited advice on how to run his village, but he looks like he just walked into a surprise party. Figures; the next thing he says is: “So I just need to come up with a way to convince those old farts that Grass-nin are plotting to attack us and have the power to do so, huh?”

“You can’t outright lie,” Sakura cautions. “But there must be ways to --”

“Oi,” Naruto is already saying, standing and striding down the toad to their prisoners, strapped in varying states of unconscious or deeply alarmed along the warty side. “Oi, I have an idea --”

“Is he --” Sakura asks, looking at his departing back in disbelief. “Is he just going to ask them?”

“Did you expect anything different?” Sasuke rolls his eyes, but not until after he watches carefully to make sure the idiot doesn’t put his foot into a trap. He hasn’t heard or sensed any disturbance, but that’s no guarantee. 

“He’s changed over the years too, you know,” Sakura is saying when he looks back at her, and he blinks.

“Too,” he says, not quite a question, testing.

“We all have,” she says, fingers curling into a lock of Sarada’s hair before letting go. It’s her own nervous habit, transferred to their daughter. It takes a moment of awkward silence before it occurs to Sasuke just how many of Sakura’s mannerisms he’s learned to look for over the years. In a lot of ways ... “I have.”

In a lot of ways, Sakura has changed the most. In others, she’s stayed the same. 

“You always look at me like I’m something to be solved,” she says after a moment, a sigh, shoulders slumping. “I thought ...”

“What did you think?” He asks, because he doesn’t know how to address the first part of that. 

“Never mind,” she says softly, and he reaches a hand out to rest it on her wrist. Just three fingers, a light touch, but she stills.

“Sakura,” he starts, and then Naruto plops down in front of them, Sarada ensconced in the triangle they form. 

“They agree,” he says, triumphant and glowing, and Sasuke doesn’t even question this part these days. Naruto has talked down people who buried themselves in shadows older than Sasuke’s. Naruto has convinced him that he can’t make himself alone. There’s not a lot Naruto can’t talk into someone if they can’t get away.

It’s probably the irritating pitch of his voice.

“That quickly?” Sakura is asking in disbelief, and Naruto beams at her, all delight, all pride. 

Sasuke looks down at Sarada’s sleeping face, brushes a strand of dark hair away from where it keeps sticking to her nose with each exhale. Something changes in the air that he doesn’t notice because the light touch, out of all their whispering, makes her scrunch her face up and push up to sitting with a yawn.

“Are we home yet?” She asks, sleepy, and Sakura tucks the side of Sasuke’s cloak more tightly around her small shoulders.

“Almost,” she says. It’s just short of dawn; the sky is clear, which means that the sky will be changing within the hour, turning into Konoha fire. “Why don’t you sleep some more?”

“Don’t want to,” Sarada says, rubbing at her eyes just before Sasuke untucks her glasses from his flak vest and sets them onto her nose. She adjusts them without thinking about it, stifles another yawn, and then spots Naruto with a suddenly abashed expression. “H-Hokage-sama!”

Sasuke almost says: _You can call him a total useless idiot._ That conversation probably should have been had years ago. He files it away as something to address later.

“Hey, Sarada-chan,” Naruto says, tone easy and light. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes,” she says, looking a little bashful now that she’s properly registered Naruto as a presence instead of just another adult. 

“If you’re okay with it, can I ask you a question?” Sakura and Sasuke’s heads both lift from contemplation of Sarada’s shift in personality from home-ruler to shy and proper student. 

“Moron, what,” Sasuke starts, but Naruto just shoves him a bit by the shoulder.

“I just want to know a bit more about what happened to Bolt, okay?” His voice is still casual, a friendly sort of lilt that Sasuke assumes puts children and animals off their guard. Sarada is a smart child, but smart children can be led astray. “He said he hit his head when he got tossed into that hole, but if he was out that long, it could be worrisome. Right, Sakura-chan?”

There are worse people to be led astray by than Naruto.

“Right,” Sakura says, still sounding dubious. “But his brain looked fine when I checked.”

“Well,” Sarada hedges, and they look at her again in unison. “I might’ve ... well, he woke up in the pit.”

“And?” Naruto encourages, leaning down to match her height. 

“I might’ve putasleepgenjutsuonhim,” she gets out at a torrential speed, and while Naruto and Sasuke are still trying to decipher it Sakura frowns at her.

“Why would you do that, Sarada?” The words clear up for Sasuke a few seconds before they do for Naruto, but the confusion stays firmly in place. Unless Bolt was panicking, Sasuke can’t imagine a reason to put him back to sleep -- then again, if Bolt is as much like Naruto as his actions seem to indicate, he can only imagine the decibel levels in such an enclosed space.

“He said he saw where the seals were on the way down,” Sarada says, mostly to Sakura, and that seems to unlock some more confidence. “And he wanted me to stand on his shoulders to try and reach them.”

“ _Ah_ ,” Sakura says, levelling Naruto a dark look that Sasuke can’t figure out the justification for. “I see.”

“See what?” Naruto asks, blank. “Why would that ...”

“I am _wearing_ a _skirt_ ,” Sarada says, with great dignity, and it’s Sasuke’s turn to say:

“ _Ah_ ,” and turn a glare on Naruto.

“Wh-” Naruto says, then looks up at Sasuke and Sakura and flinches back. “Wait -- no, I’m sure he had no idea --”

“I don’t know what I expected,” Sakura says, in tones of deep disgust.

“Hold on,” Naruto is wheedling, but Sasuke is already reaching out when Sakura gets there first.

Naruto is sitting with them one moment, hands flapping ineffectually, and then he’s gone. Sasuke and Sarada follow the arc of his trajectory where Sakura threw him, wounded squeaks trailing off with him before he lands with a tremendously satisfying crash in the trees. From her toad Hinata startles to standing, looking back, then looks back at them.

Sakura gives her a thumbs-up, and Sasuke has to turn away to shake with laughter so Sarada doesn’t actually learn that it’s okay to throw the Hokage several hundred yards.

When he turns back Sakura is looking at him with a smug look on her face, but it's softened around her eyes, something warm and secret that he -- 

He glances down when Sarada tugs on his cloak and Sakura’s.

“Was that really okay?” She asks.

Sasuke is about to school his face into something appropriately serious when Sakura says: “Yes.”

He stares at her.

“If anyone ever messes with your family, you do the same,” Sakura instructs, and Sarada first blinks and then nods solemnly. 

“What about Hokage-sama’s family?” She asks after a pause, and Sakura snorts.

“Trust me, I’m just giving vent to feelings Hinata won’t,” she says darkly, and Sasuke glances back at the cloud of leaves from Naruto’s impact. When he gives her a questioning look, though, she sighs. “No, it’s not really my place to get involved. Even if Naruto could use a punch much more often than this.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Sasuke says finally, after working through a few options, and is startled when she starts to laugh. He can’t remember the last time he made her laugh. He does remember -- he does remember the timbre of it, how it feels in his ears, his bones.

“Ah,” Sarada says suddenly, attention drawn away by the rise of the Hokage monument over the forest in the distance, the spires of the gleaming civilian city crowning them with the first shimmering reflections of dawn. “I see home!”

\--

Sasuke’s estimation of Hyuuga Hinata grows by leaps and bounds when she keeps a perfectly straight face in front of Naruto’s incorrigible whining after he finally reconvenes with them at the gates. “Bolt was asleep,” she says, quiet voice perfectly reasonable, and when he whines _But Hinata-channnn_ loud enough that Bolt on his shoulders stirs and grumbles unconscious nonsense, she adds: “And, of course, I had complete faith in your ability to catch up to us.”

“Ha,” Sakura says, sounding like she thoroughly approves what she sees, and hefts Sarada (also asleep again, despite all her protests) up onto her back. “Alright, let’s go home.”

“Do you want me to,” Sasuke starts, reaching out for their daughter, but Sakura fends him off with a light kick at his ankles.

“You can’t fool me,” she says, a smirk on her lips but still soft around the eyes. “You had her most of the way. It’s my turn now.”

“It’s your turn most of the time,” he counters, and then thinks about how many times in his life he’s wished he had the ability to rewind time only to discover that he _can_ , but only if he wants to give up one of his brother’s eyes. (How much time has gone by that he thinks, now and again, that he might be okay with that, with letting go of the most tangible parts of Itachi to live with just the intangible.)

But Sakura’s gaze on him isn’t cold, just cool, evaluative. It holds for a few seconds before it breaks and she looks at the street ahead instead, self-deprecation in the curve of her neck. 

“I know,” she says, and when he inhales to speak she says: “I know we need to talk, Sasuke. But I want to wait until we get home first.”

He closes his mouth. All around them the streets light up with liquid gold, cobblestone by cobblestone, Konoha waking. His daughter turns her head into a more comfortable angle on his wife’s back, tucks her face into pink hair and murmurs something incomprehensible.

They don’t live far from the Hokage tower, Sakura’s pick for a location -- not so far from her parents’ that they can’t stop by to help with Sarada, not so close to the downtown proper that it’s too noisy at night. Sasuke hadn’t thought much about the choice; it had never entered his mind that he’d need to one day choose and buy a house. There are times even now that he returns to Konohagakure and sets his feet for where the Uchiha compound used to be before he can think about it.

It’s just an empty field, even the rubble gone. Naruto has occasionally made subtle (for him) comments about how nice it might be to have extra space for the village now that it’s expanding so quickly, especially with civilians and their businesses flooding in, and until now Sasuke has largely ignored him. Until now -- but _now_ , he thinks, has always been happening.

Sarada demonstrates the resilience of youth just as they unlock the front door by waking up and demanding to be put down, pink-cheeked about the possibility of having been seen by Academy classmates as she was carried through the streets like a child. Sasuke remembers Bolt’s comment, all innocent malice, and decides to ruffle her hair until she escapes his range with a huffed --

“ _Papa_ , you’re the worst,” and then announces with all of her not-quite-four-feet of gravitas: “I am taking a shower. I am _disgusting_.”

That’s Sakura’s work there, Sasuke can tell, and he doesn’t even realise he’s smiling in amusement as she retreats up the stairs until he spots Sakura looking at him, leaning back against their front door. It fades from his face slowly, her expression becoming less readable with it until she looks down and finishes unzipping her tall boots.

“You love her so much,” she says, stepping up into the entry room proper.

It’s not the opening salvo he expected. Sasuke stares.

“It’s so obvious,” she adds, giving him a wry smile as she pads past him to put on water for tea. “Your face when you look at her. You’re totally besotted.”

“She’s my daughter,” Sasuke manages after a desperate hunt for words or a second meaning or a -- guide to this conversation. “Should I be acting some other way?”

“No,” Sakura says, setting out two cups on the kitchen table, placing them at the angle of the corner instead of across from one another. Sasuke’s dealt in information almost more than violence for over a decade, so he knows that there’s something being communicated here, but --

But Sakura throws him off-kilter, has for a long time. He looks at the deft movements of her hands as she locates a box of tea leaves, then a teapot, tosses in a handful of leaves and taps a quick trill of fingertips against the counter while waiting for the water to boil. She fits here, in this sunny kitchen, in this comfortable house close to Naruto and safety. 

“Are we talking?” He asks, finally, because he’s not sure, and she surprises him with half a laugh. It’s not even bitter: it’s like she expected it.

“Are we?” She returns, and he stares a moment longer before pulling a chair out and sitting, raising an eyebrow at her to continue. The morning glints off her hair and turns it almost orange, Konoha fire everywhere here, burning through the air until the electric kettle dings. Sakura turns to it and says at the same time, not looking at him: “It takes two, Sasuke.”

He wants to run his hands through his hair and think about the next part of the world he should check in on -- but there’s tea in his cup now, steaming, and Sakura looking at him with expectant green eyes.

That’s not new, in itself. 

“We,” he starts, stops, sets a finger on the rim of the teacup because he doesn’t know what to do with his hands otherwise. They’re still in combat gear. The sound of water runs overhead, their daughter cleaning away the first real fear of her life. Sasuke hadn’t wanted her to have any. In the end that’s what makes him say: “We’re not working.”

Sakura’s mouth thins before she covers it with a sip of tea that must be too hot, though she doesn’t react. “And?”

“And,” he says, making the effort to maintain eye contact. “I wanted this to work. I did. Sarada deserved something better than what I had, and I -- I do -- I want her to be happy.”

“I do too, Sasuke,” Sakura says, setting down her cup. “I want her to be the happiest girl in the world, but she’s not. And that’s --” She stops, reaches out and puts a hand over his as if she’s seen something in his face, her voice going soft. Always too soft, her and Naruto both: “That’s okay, Sasuke. It was hard for me to accept that at first, too, but look at her. She’s grown so much, and she’ll keep growing, and sometimes being unhappy is just part of that.”

“That doesn’t mean,” Sasuke starts, moving his hand away from her warmth. “That doesn’t mean she needs to deal with ugliness at my hand.”

“If not from those who love her, then who?” There’s a pause, and then Sakura adds, a harder edge to her tone now: “Do you think she hasn’t learned already? That she doesn’t want to know why you’re never here and my excuses --”

“We agreed to just say I was working,” he says, feeling his temper flare and clenching his left hand under the table to hold it in. “I _am_ working --”

“Naruto needs your intel, _whatever_ ,” Sakura snaps, swiping a hand through the air as if deleting Naruto’s importance out of this moment, and it’s the first time Sasuke has seen her do that since they were kids. It makes him stare openly, and she makes a noise of frustration and repeats: “Naruto needs your help, but Sarada needs _you_.”

“When I was here the village wouldn’t even look at her,” Sasuke says, and he wants it to be a hiss -- wants it to be angry, but it just comes out tired. 

He doesn’t know how Naruto lived through fifteen years of it. He doesn’t know how the village isn’t a smoking ruin of Kyuubi chakra. Come to that, he doesn’t know how the village isn’t a smoking ruin of the six paths of Pein, or an empty shell filled with dreaming bodies, or levelled by the darkness that had consumed him until light only let in at the corners, out of his control, a peripheral awareness of a different world.

“Sarada is stronger than you think,” Sakura retorts, but her voice is shading into exhaustion, too. “Sasuke, _I_ need you. Do you ever think about that?”

She keeps throwing him, and Sasuke thinks incongruously that if this were a spar he’s pretty sure he’d be losing. “What do you need me for?” 

“What do I,” she looks halfway incredulous. “We’re married. What do you think that means?”

“I know we --” he starts, then does give into the urge to shove a hand through his hair before looking at her again. If there’s a plea in his face he can’t even control it, because he thought he’d known what a marriage was for, respectability and clan and family, and then he’d walked out of the village to keep his clan and his face away from his own daughter and he doesn’t know anymore. He’d thought, in the beginning, of the happiness in Sakura’s face, of coming home to a lit house and something other than ghosts, and he hadn’t -- he hadn’t thought. “I don’t ...”

“You don’t know,” Sakura supplies, and he inhales sharply. Exhales, controlled. 

In the first years after the war, walking a world that was at once untouched by and rebuilding from it, each brief return to Konoha had been coloured more by Sakura than anyone else. There had been the ghost of Kakashi, busy shirking his Hokage duties except where important, and impression of Naruto, busy generating his own PR without any conscious effort, but there had always been Sakura: smiling at the gate, surprised with inexplicable pleasure to see him. If Sasuke had left the village to see more than what existed between him and Naruto -- the unshakable foundation of that bond -- Sakura was the first thing he’d looked at.

The irony doesn’t escape him, that he’d found her by leaving the village again. If he thinks back he’s not really sure if he ever did, just that she was kind and made him kind, made him want to be something other than the raw twist of flayed nerves he’d been for a decade. She’d represented the chance for home, and to her, he’d -- he’d been something. He’s not sure what.

“I don’t know you,” he says, finally. The core of it, the truth because he owes that much, her eyes widening: “I didn’t, then. Maybe never have.”

She’s quiet for a stretch, dawn lighting the tableau with something nearly unreal, so warm that it’s like standing underwater with all the colours gone wrong. When she lifts her eyes to his again there’s -- there’s something he can’t read. Something crisp, precise. “Do you want to?”

“Do you want to take the chance?” He asks, because now that it’s on the table it’s easier to breathe. “You don’t know me either.”

“This many years,” she says, and trails off. A lock of pink escapes from behind her ear as she bows her head, brings her tea up again. 

Sasuke waits. Above them the water cuts off, followed by the sound of Sarada’s light, sure footsteps across the floor. 

“This many years, and you’re right,” she says, and he opens his mouth only for her to raise a hand. “But you’re wrong, too, Sasuke.”

“What do you mean?” He frowns at her, but the expression blinks right off his face when she smiles at him instead of frowning back.

“I’m not an idiot,” she says, which doesn’t give him the slightest clue as to where she’s going. “I mean, I was, a bit, as a kid and when I couldn’t fall out of love with you even when I tried. But even if I know I don’t _know_ you, I’ve known you for a long time. I know there are reasons to keep loving you.”

There are too many versions of the same word going on here for Sasuke, but he lets her take his hand between both of hers when she reaches out again.

“I know you’re embarrassed when you have nightmares,” she says, and he goes a little pale. “That it’s because you hate the idea of weakness. You want so much to be strong for Sarada. For us -- you want so much for what you think family is to work out that you’ll take yourself out of it. I think it’s stupid, but I know why you do it.

“I know your favourite thing is tucking Sarada in,” and her smile is a little wider now, sad at the edges, glowing with daylight proper. “I know that you fed the stray cats when you were home -- did you think they’d understand you weren’t around when you left?”

“... I thought they’d give up,” he manages finally, because it’s the only piece he can really handle. She lifts a hand to his face and tucks a few stray bangs behind his ear, touch soft.

“I don’t know you, Sasuke,” she says. “But I could. And for Sarada’s sake and mine, I want to.”

He doesn’t move. Exhales, very lightly, looks down and to the side at the curve of her arm closing the space between them. “It won’t be fun and games. If I stay in the village ...”

“I’m not a girl anymore,” she says, and that much is true.

And it’s true, too, that she’s never represented anything more than a person, flawed and unknown, but maybe _unknown_ doesn’t need to mean _unknowable_. There’s love like what Sasuke has for Sarada, what maybe Itachi had for him, something tender in the painful sense -- love in the way that he can’t comprehend and can’t contain and feels dangerous in its irrationality. There’s what makes up the air between Naruto and Sasuke, fate and destiny and their cowritten histories in this life and others, less a blood-bond than a bone-bond, built into the structure of them and indelible no matter how much Sasuke has tried to let it go.

But there’s this, too; something worn familiar by time, definable and finite, and maybe not every story needs to be a grand drama. It’s taken Sasuke years to learn peace, and perhaps this is another lesson in turn; that there are patterns that aren’t closed loops, that there are bonds that can be chosen, too.

“I can try,” he says, and she smiles again. Still tired, a little sad, not so much soft as blurred by the brightness of the light, so he says it again, “I can try.”

And Sakura says, quiet into just the space bracketed between them: “Okay. Me too.”

\--

 _Remember when you had to be brave, with those kids?_ Sasuke had asked Sarada last week, kneeling to meet her confused stare on a level. _I need you to be brave again, but much more, and for much longer. Can you do that?_

Naruto is late to his own office, which is something that Sasuke supposes he should have expected even if it adjoins his home. It’s Kakashi’s bad influence, though that thought has become a more sober one over the years. 

He starts out standing in front of the desk, but after a few minutes decides that there’s no way he’s giving Naruto the level of deference required to stay there while waiting for whenever the idiot wants to wake up and saunters to the window instead, looking out over the slowly amassing crowd in the street below. A few minutes pass before he can’t stare at the curious faces any longer and he turns to the desk instead, pausing for just one beat before stepping up to it, kicking Naruto’s chair back a few feet.

It’s the same desk as it’s always been, and he doesn’t know why he expected the room to look different from this angle. Even when he’d talked about becoming Hokage, he hadn’t thought about this part in detail: the mound of paperwork stacked messily to the left, the square of darker wood marking the spot where Naruto probably sits the Hokage’s seal every morning.

There’s definitely an empty instant ramen cup stashed underneath one corner of the desk. It’s surprisingly easy to imagine Naruto at work here deep into the evening, sneaking his vice while Shikamaru is probably off sneaking his own. The idiot’s always been a slow reader anyway.

The glass-and-sand paperweight is toppled over onto its side, though it’s still doing its job of holding down several documents that look like they’ve been read a couple of times if the faint oil spot in one corner is any indication. Sasuke is reaching out to straighten it when the door blasts open and Naruto gusts into the room in total disarray.

“Sorry, sorry,” he’s saying, holding his hat on his head with one hand while trying to tie the front of his Hokage robes shut with the other. “I lost track of time this morning, couldn’t get --”

He sees Sasuke late, staring at him before flushing with instant comedic levels of anger. Sasuke lets his mouth curl, sardonic, because it’s the only response Naruto really deserves.

“That’s _my_ spot!” Naruto shouts, tossing his hat at Sasuke for a lost cause and stomping over. “You’re years behind if you want to usurp me yet, bastard!”

“Like I’d want anything they’d just hand over to an idiot like you,” Sasuke retorts, catching the hat and dropping it over the paperweight, wondering how it is a quiet room turns into a show-and-dance as soon as Naruto enters it. He slides out from behind the desk even as Naruto storms into place, but he stays leaned against the side of it because --

Well, Tsunade had called him an insolent brat when she was Hokage, so there’s probably tradition here.

“You’re the worst choice for first person a guy sees in the morning,” Naruto grumps, fussing over his papers as if he has any clue what order they were in. The words make Sasuke lift an eyebrow, though.

“Hinata still isn’t home,” he says, not bothering to ask: now that he’s looking more carefully, it tells in all the details of Naruto. His Hokage robe is the best-kept part of him, but underneath it his shirt is rumpled and his hair is more of a disaster than usual, and Sasuke isn’t entirely convinced he’s not seeing a piece of cereal stuck to the thigh of his pants.

“She’s just busy with clan stuff,” Naruto snaps at him, but deflates almost instantly afterward because -- again -- he makes terrible decisions and Sasuke is probably the most consistently terrible one he makes. “She’s staying with Hanabi for now. Bolt and Himawari came to see me over the weekend.”

Sasuke had returned home from a determined trek to the grocery store a week after they’d rescued Sarada and the other kids to find Naruto wibbling into Sakura’s shoulder. Before he’d even had a chance to say anything, she’d seen him, heaved a sigh of relief, and physically attached Naruto to him with a brusque: _I need to talk to Hinata, keep him out of trouble_ \--

At a loss, he’d mostly just gotten Naruto drunk. 

In between a fair amount of hiccupping and the occasional snort of self-pitying snot from Naruto, he’d pieced together that Hinata had politely, quietly, and firmly removed some of her possessions and the children to the Hyuuga houses.

 _She said she believed in me, that I’d figure out how to be Hokage and part of the family at the same time,_ Naruto had wailed while Sasuke unsteadily poured him another cup of sake. In between the lines of Naruto’s shocked grief, Sasuke had read that the signs had been on the horizon, but Naruto had bowled through them as he usually did only to run into a wall he couldn’t bulldoze. 

It looks as if he’s still trying, now, in the tired darkness underneath his eyes. If Sakura were here, she’d know how to be kind. Instead, Sasuke says: “Clan business is a full-time job.”

“So’s being Hokage,” Naruto says, clearly at risk of descending into a full-blown sulk, so Sasuke resists the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose (there’s no warding off a Naruto-caused headache, he knows this already) and instead sighs.

“Sakura found us something through the civilian hospital network,” he says, making Naruto stare at him as if he’s grown a second head. He doesn’t stare back, partially because he’s still kind of embarrassed just to be entertaining the thought of submitting to civilian methods, partially because the description given at their first appointment three days ago had nearly made him bolt for freedom. “It’s called marriage counselling.”

“Marriage counselling,” Naruto repeats, as if the words are in another language. “Like, what, you have an advisor for your marriage now? You think I should ask Shikamaru?”

“ _No_ , you idiot,” Sasuke says, turning out of his lean just so he can aim a kick at the side of Naruto’s knee. It puts them on the same side of the desk, though Naruto ducks out of the way with an absent-minded twist.

“Okay, good,” Naruto says, looking genuinely relieved. “Because I think his solution with Temari is usually to just let her beat him up.”

Sasuke resists the urge to roll his eyes, remembers that no one is here besides Naruto, and rolls his eyes.

“Shut up, bastard,” Naruto says, swatting off Sasuke’s _I didn’t say anything_ on autopilot, and then: “So what is it, then?”

“It’s ...” Sasuke searches, then bites out the word with distaste: “Talking. Mostly. It’s supposed to make us better at talking to each other.”

“So it’s supposed to be, like, what,” Naruto says, looking blank. “Talk no Jutsu?”

“ _I_ don’t know how civilian minds work,” Sasuke snaps. “Just ask Sakura, alright?”

Not that Sakura had looked any more comfortable than he had when she’d been sitting next to Sasuke in the wood-panelled office, but she’d also looked determined. The thought of talking to a complete stranger with no guarantee of silence other than money still makes his spine crawl, but he makes so few promises that they’re impossible not to keep.

(Also, the ‘therapist’ had turned out to be a kindly old woman with a matronly pair of thick glasses, and the day Sasuke lets his fear get the better of him in front of septuagenarians is the day he’ll retire.)

“It sounds weird,” Naruto is saying, still dubious, but at Sasuke’s glare he holds up both hands with a placating: “Alright, alright, I’ll talk to her.” He pauses, then revises: “ _We’ll_ talk to her.”

“Hope for you yet, moron,” Sasuke mutters, which -- as seems to be usual now -- just makes Naruto’s tired face break out into something of a smile.

“Look who’s talking, asshole,” he says, in a tone that strongly suggests more fondness than Sasuke deserves, and then lifts his hat and Gaara’s paperweight off the documents Sasuke had righted it on earlier. “Are you sure about this?”

“If I weren’t, I wouldn’t be here,” Sasuke says, voice short because the truth is -- more than ever before, he’s not, but he’s lived a life of certainty once. The sharply delineated curves of his path had only led in one direction, and what he’s been learning since then has been how to live with options, how to accept choices given to him by others.

“Yeah, I know,” Naruto says, opening a drawer to fish for a proper pen. “But this is your --”

“Is that the paperweight I sent you?” Sasuke cuts him off in sudden disbelief, leaning into Naruto’s space to stare down at the hideous snow-globe, rolling around with Naruto’s abused fountain pens. 

“Oh -- yeah!” Naruto sounds nothing other than delighted. “Shika said that it wasn’t professional enough for a Hokage.”

Nara has never been Sasuke’s favourite of Naruto’s friends.

“I used it anyway for a while, but --” Naruto picks it up, turning it over to show him: “It got cracked in a fight in the office a while ago, back when we were still dealing with a lot of assassins. Didn't want it taking more damage and exploding over my stuff.”

 _Back when we were dealing with assassins,_ Naruto says, as if he’s talking about a spate of bad weather or a season of stunted potatoes. Sasuke runs a finger over the long crack in the base of the ugly souvenir, fake snow torrenting downward to pool in the top of the globe, and it takes a louder-than-usual breath from Naruto to startle him into realising he’s still leaned into what is probably Naruto’s personal bubble. Inasmuch as Naruto has one, from what Sasuke has seen.

“It’s exactly as professional as you deserve,” he says, taking a step back. Naruto snorts (but his eyes are warm, which is something Sasuke has been trying not to remember: like Sakura’s gentleness, like Konoha’s beauty), so he adds: “Toss it out if it’s broken, dumbass.”

“What?! No!” Naruto clutches the paperweight to his chest as if it’s worth way more than the already-overpriced ten ryou Sasuke spent on it and he’s afraid Sasuke will take it away.

“I’ll get you an even uglier one, to match what’s happened to your face since then,” Sasuke says, and for whatever reason that makes said face break out into a grin, wide and more carefree than any Kage has a right to be --

“That a promise?” Naruto says, leaning in as if Sasuke didn’t just evacuate his space. From this close he’s all blue eyes and stupid expressions, the wrinkles giving away his age lost in the backlighting from the windows. It’s enough to make Sasuke wonder for the first time what he looks like to his teammates by now.

Chances are good that Sakura is the best-preserved, following pattern.

“I thought you wanted me to sign over my clan estates,” he says, pointed, and Naruto blinks out of whatever immature glee he’s been experiencing and grabs the first pen he sees.

“You don’t get to take this back, bastard,” he warns, as if Sasuke doesn’t already know.

Just to be an asshole, Sasuke underlines the line reading _I, Uchiha Sasuke, consent to the lease of the Uchiha estates to Konohagakure for 100 years, terms renewable at the conclusion thereof._ “I could.”

“You gonna come back from the dead just to fuck with me?” Naruto asks, and Sasuke has to snort.

“You think you’re going to outlive me?” He hopes Naruto does. He’s imagined living in a world where he is alive and Naruto is dead before, and ... “Though with the amount of preservatives you eat, your body might go on even after your brain is dead. Not that that’ll make much difference.”

“Just sign it, damn it,” Naruto growls, shoving the papers over at him more aggressively so that Sasuke has to stop his wrist and smooth them out flat again. He leans over the desk, reads the document for what is possibly the fiftieth time, and sets his pen to paper.

 _Lease conditional on usage of said land to build and operate an orphanage,_ reads the paragraph above. _Rents from all attendant properties to be used to fund operations, with no funds nor lands nor profits to be used toward facilitation nor training for war._ Sakura had helped draft it; her careful attention to detail is as clear in the wording as if she’s speaking the words herself.

 _Uchiha,_ he writes, calligraphy as sure as he isn’t. 

There’s enough land on what used to be the compound to house at least a hundred children, a few live-in teachers and caretakers. The dozen kids from Grass are currently crammed three or four to a room in the old spare properties Konoha previously allocated for orphans without family money, but Naruto seems to have complete confidence in this Yamato’s ability to create something livable in a matter of days. 

Sasuke had thought about giving them the diagrams of the district he has, the blueprints of the standard Uchiha house.

“We should have done this a long time ago,” he says, still looking down at the stark black of his clan’s name on the paper.

“We got away from time,” Naruto says, which isn’t the correct way to phrase it in the least, but is the right way.

“Yeah,” Sasuke says, and thinks: _Not anymore._ They can decide what the place will look like when the time comes. He signs _Sasuke_ quickly, the last drop of ink bleeding into the final character, and hands the pen back to Naruto.

“It’s done,” he says, and Naruto shakes his head. “What?”

“Did you forget?” He asks, jerking a thumb at the windows, the crowd waiting outside.

No: Sasuke hadn’t forgotten. He’s just chosen to take things as they arrive, make the choices he believes are right and handle _now_ when it comes.

It doesn’t mean he doesn’t stiffen up, gaze following the path of that thumb, doesn’t think about Sarada’s solemn face when she’d answered: _Yes, Papa. I can be brave._

“It won’t be easy,” he says, which isn’t stalling so much as -- talking. Reviewing facts. The therapist had said that much was important. “For any of us. To tell them the truth now, after all these years --”

“I’ll help keep an eye out for Sarada-chan,” Naruto interrupts, as if he’d voiced his exact fears out loud, and then: “And Sakura-chan, and you.”

“ _I_ don’t need,” Sasuke starts, turning back to glare at this idiot of a Hokage, and then freezes to stillness when he turns right into Naruto’s palm, reaching out to touch his face.

“I’ve got you, Sasuke,” Naruto says, grey-and-gold hair glowing in the sun coming in over the civilian-topped Hokage monument, cheek limned with light, eyes bluer than should be real. “I always have.”

In all his years of wandering, Sasuke has looked for meaning, for new bonds, for signs of hope as much as he’s looked for signs of danger, of hatred festering. He’s found them, too: it’s been easier than he thought. But before and after all of that, there’s Naruto, the tale they’ve been telling since birth.

What Sasuke is learning now, what he’s been walking into for longer than he’s realised, is that it’s true that a narrative has a beginning and an end. His, Naruto’s, Sakura’s, their team and their village, their families, their pain and joys; they do have starts and finishes. And it’s true, too, that the path taken throughout is itself something to pay attention to.

But they’re more than just stories; they’re humans, and there can be more than one ending in a lifetime, a hundred beginnings or a thousand, limitless as love after all.

“Naruto,” he says, not quite leaning into that touch, not disallowing it. “I --”

A knock cracks through the room, sharp enough that they flinch apart and both reach for a weapon before the ANBU’s voice registers: “Hokage-sama, it’s time.”

 _It’s time,_ Sasuke repeats to himself, inhales, and starts for the door being pulled open by one of Naruto’s masked guards. There’s a low murmur he can hear, most of Konoha gathered below the Hokage’s balcony for this. Kakashi is there, staying close to Sakura and Sarada if he’s kept his word, and --

He’s grabbed by the arm.

“ _Sasuke_ ,” Naruto growls, glaring. “You started that before and you don’t get to leave it unfinished again now.”

Sasuke stares at him. Naruto is -- he can see colour at the moron’s ears, and that is what makes his mouth curl in the end, voice easy, truth easy: “It’s been something different every time.”

He pulls out of Naruto’s grip then, waits just long enough to hear the -- “Wha- what the hell is that supposed to mean? _Every_ time -- bastard, wait for me when I’m yelling at you!”

Sasuke squares his shoulders, Naruto at his back, and steps into the sunlight.


End file.
